THE 
PASSING 


AND 
_THE 


THB  PERMANENT 
IN  RELIGION  .,^. 


MINOT  Jf 


Cibrar^  of  trhe  Cheolojical  ^tmimry 

PRINCETON  •  NEW  JERSEY 


PRESENTED  BY 

The  Estate  of  the 
Rev.  John  B.  Wledinger. 

BX  9841  .S25  1901 

Savage,  Minot  Judson,  18A1 

1918. 
The  passing  and  the 

Derma nen't  in  rpli^ion 


By  MINOT  J.  SAVAGE 


Life  Beyond  Death  Being  a  Review  of  the 
World's  Beliefs  on  the  Subject,  a  Consideration 
of  Present  Conditions  of  Thought  and  Feeling 
Leading  to  the  Question  as  to  whether  it  can  be 
Demonstrated  as  a  Fact.  To  which  is  added  an 
Appendix  Containing  Some  Hints  as  to  Personal 
Experiences  and  Opinions.     8',  pp.  342.     $1.50. 

The  Passing  and  the  Permanent  in  Religion. 

A  Plain  Treatment  of  the  Great  Essentials  of  Re- 
ligion, being  a  Sifting  from  These  of  Such  Things 
as  Cannot  Outlive  the  Results  of  Scientific,  Histori- 
cal and  Critical  Study, — so  Making  more  clearly 
Seen  "  The  Things  which  Cannot  Be  Shaken." 
8".     (By  mail,  1 1. 50).     AH  $i-35- 


•^ 


THE  PASSING  AND  THE  PERMANENT 
IN  RELIGION 


The  Passing  and  t 
Permanent  in  Religion 


A  PLAIN  TREATMENT  OF  THE  GREAT  ESSENTIALS  OF  RELIGION,  BEING  A  SIFT- 
ING FROM  THESE   OF  SUCH   THINGS   AS  CANNOT  OUTLIVE  THE  RESULTS 
OF     SCIENTIFIC,     HISTORICAL     AND     CRITICAL    STUDY,  —  SO 
MAKING    MORE    CLEARLY     SEEN    "  THE    THINGS 
WHICH  CANNOT   BE    SHAKEN  " 


BY 

MINOT  JUDSON  SAVAGE,  D.D.  (Harvard) 

AUTHOR    OF    "  LIFE    BEYOND    DEATH,"    ETC. 


THE    FOUNDATION    OF    GOD    STANDETH    SURE  " 

2    Tim.  ii.  :  ig 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS 

NKW  YORK  &  LONDON 

Cbe  Iknlchetbochet  ipvess 

1901 


Copyright,  igoi 

BY 

MINOT  JUDSON  SAVAGE 


Zbc  IRniclierbocfeer  press,  "Wcw  l^orfi 


PREFACE 

RELIGIONS  die,  while  religion  is  univer- 
sal, perftianent  and  progressive  :  theolo- 
gies change  and  pass,  but  so  long  as  man 
thinks,  he  will  think  and  theorise,  though 
imperfectly,  about  the  greatest  of  all  themes  : 
man  has  always  speculated  about  the  universe 
and,  in  later  times,  has  studied  it,  and  his 
theories  about  it  always  have  been  and 
always  must  be  intimately  associated  with 
both  his  religion  and  his  theology :  man  at 
first  regarded  himself  as  made  suddenly  by 
fiat  power,  but  he  has  learned  that  he  has 
evolved  from  lower  forms  of  life,  while  his 
religions  and  his  theologies  have  kept  step 
with  his  own  advance  :  bibles  have  been  the 
natural  expression  of  man's  hopes,  fears  and 
aspirations  at  the  different  stages  of  his  ad- 
vance, not  creating  religion,  but  being  created 
by  it  :  gods  have  been  the  best  ideals  which 
man  has  been  able  to  imagine,  at  different 
steps  of  his  advance,  of  the  one  Eternal,  of 
whose  life  all    things   are  only  the    changing 


iv  Preface 

and  passing  expression  :  saviours  have  taken 
shape  in  accord  with  man's  thoughts  of  the 
evils  from  which  he  supposed  he  needed  to  be 
delivered,  and  all  are  entitled  to  that  name 
who  have  helped  to  deliver  the  race  from  any 
of  its  evils,  though  this  may  not  interfere 
with  the  supremacy  of  one :  worship  has 
taken  shape  according  to  man's  changing  the- 
ories of  the  powers  he  has  thought  of  as  being 
able  to  help  or  hurt  him,  and  it  is  essentially 
admiration  for  that  which  man  thinks  of  as 
above  him,  and  so  is  the  condition  of  all 
growth  and  progress :  prayer  is  the  universal 
instinct  which  leads  man  to  try  to  get  into 
helpful  relations  with  the  powers  thought  of 
as  able  to  control  his  destiny,  and  since  the 
conditions  out  of  which  it  springs  are  perma- 
nent, it  cannot  pass  away,  though  it  must 
slough  off  its  superstitions  and  become  ra- 
tional :  the  Church  is  the  voluntary  and  nat- 
ural organisation  of  men  as  religious  beings, 
and  it  seeks-  the  highest  spiritual  ends  of 
which  those  who  constitute  it  can  dream  :  hells 
are  the  more  or  less  horrible  dreams  which 
have  haunted  the  imaginations  of  men  as  the 
outcome  of  evil  in  another  life,  and  they  have 
generally  been  crude  and  libellous  parodies 
on  the  truth  that  in  all  worlds  men  reap  what 


Preface  v 

they  have  sowed  :  heavens  have  taken  shape 
in  accordance  with  the  same  human  fancy 
which  has  created  its  hells,  and,  in  essence, 
they  are  the  kernels  of  all  the  fair  and  good 
things  which  are  to  blossom  and  bear  fruit  for 
the  good  :  men  pass  into  the  resurrection  life 
the  kind  of  beings  which  they  have  become 
here,  and  wltile  there  will  be  opportunity  for 
moral  advance,  there  will  also  be  field  for  the 
activity  and  development  of  all  the  great 
powers  and  faculties  and  tastes  which  pertain 
to  the  essential  nature  of  man  in  this  life  : — 
to  set  forth,  develop,  and  establish,  so  far  as 
possible,  the  positions  above  suggested,  is  that 
which  is  attempted  in  this  book. 


** 


CONTENTS 


.^ 


II. — Theologiks  and  Theology 

•     25 

III. — The  Universe    .... 

.     49 

IV.— Man 

.         .     69 

V. — BuiLES 

.     92 

VI. — Gods  and  God  .... 

.   117 

VII. — Saviours 

.   140 

VIII. — Worship 

.   166 

IX. — Prayer 

.         .   190 

X. — The  Church      .... 

.   216 

XI. — Hells 

.   243 

XII. — Heavens    ..... 

.   272 

XIII. — The  Resurrection  Life    . 

.   292 

Appendix 

•  317 

Index         

•  33^ 

The  Passing  and  the  Permanent 
IN  Religion 


RELIGIONS  AND  RELIGION 

THERE  is  a  wide-spread  impression  abroad 
that  religion  may  not  be  a  permanent 
element  in  human  nature.  Many  are  telHng 
us  that  it  is  a  phase  of  thought,  of  feeHng,  of 
Hfe,  pecuHar  to  the  early  and  comparatively 
uncultivated  stages  of  man's  career ;  that  it  is 
something  which  the  civilised  man  will  pro- 
gressively outgrow  and  at  last  leave  behind. 
Many  philosophers,  many  scientific  men,  have 
held  this  position,  and  have  done  what  they 
could  to  disseminate  it  amongf  their  readers. 
And  there  is  a  popular  feeling  in  the  com- 
munity that  in  some  way  the  churches,  which 
are  res^arded  as  standino-  at  least  for  religion, 
are   gradually    losing    their    hold    upon    the 


2  Religions  and  Religion 

people.  And  some  are  wondering  as  to  whether 
by  and  by  they  may  not  all  become  empty, 
and  human  life  be  simply  secular. 

There  are  persons  who  rejoice  over  this 
prophecy.  They  are  not  evil-minded  people  : 
among  them  are  some  of  the  noblest  that  you 
will  find  in  the  world.  They  believe  in  all  sin- 
cerity that  religion  is  the  last  remnant  of  a 
once  universal  superstition  that  held  the  minds 
of  men  in  slavery,  and  that  the  subjection  to 
religious  ideas  is  only  tyranny  exercised  over 
the  human  mind  and  heart  by  the  shapes 
which  the  imagination  has  projected  against 
the  background  of  the  Unknown. 

On  the  other  hand,  there  are  large  numbers 
of  people  who  are  troubled  over  the  possible 
decay  of  religion.  They  are  afraid  of  science, 
afraid  of  philosophical  speculation,  afraid  of 
criticism,  afraid  of  asking  too  many  questions 
concerning  the  foundations  of  things  in  relig- 
ion, lest  the  great  reason  for  its  existence 
shall  be  seen  to  be  no  adequate  reason,  only 
a  persuasion  that  is  to  pass  away. 

I  do  not  think  we  need  be  specially  troubled 
over  this  problem.  We  ought  to  be  able  to 
look  at  it  dispassionately,  because,  if  religion 
is  only  superstition,  why  then,  of  course,  it 
ouorht  to  be  outc^rown.     If  religion  be  not  di- 


Religions  and  Religion    '  3 

vine,  it  cannot  be  eternal  ;  and,  surely,  it  is 
better  for  the  world  that  it  s^iould  know  and 
face  the  truth  of  things. 

If,  on  the  other  hand,  religion  be  divine,  if 
it  be  essential  to  the  highest  and  noblest  hu- 
man life,  why  then  criticism  and  question  will 
only  verify  this  fact  by  and  by  and  make  us 
surer  of  that  ^vhich  many  of  us  regard  as  a 
grand  and  noble  heritage,  the  grandest,  the 
noblest  conceivable. 

I  do  not  wonder,  as  I  look  down  the  ages 
of  the  past  towards  the  beginning  and  see 
what  has  happened,  that  men  get  the  im- 
pression that  religion  is  not  an  eternal  thing. 
A  thousand  religions  have  already  died. 
They  have  dropped  from  the  tree  of  human 
life  like  leaves  scattered  by  the  winds  in  No- 
vember. Away  down  towards  the  beginning, 
each  tribe  out  of  the  many  had  its  own  relig- 
ion, the  ideas  of  which  —  at  any  rate  the 
theories  of  which  —  have  proved  to  be  only 
temporary,  something  to  be  outgrown  as  in- 
telligence has  advanced.  Religion  after  re- 
union wliich  troubled  the  ancient  Hebrew,  as 
we  read  the  record  of  his  history  in  the  Old 
Testament,  has  ceased  to  exist.  The  religions 
of  Amnion,  of  Amalek,  of  Moab,  of  Philistia, 
of  a  hundred  others,  have  passed  away.    There 


4  Religions  and  Religion 

were  many  religions  in  the  Euphrates  Valley 
before  Babylon  became  a  city,  which  have  all 
vanished.  The  great  religions  of  Babylon  itself 
are  to  us  only  names.  We  spell  out  a  frag- 
ment here  and  there  of  some  inscription  on  a 
brick  or  a  cylinder,  and  try  to  resurrect  the 
forms  of  the  gods  that  have  passed  even  from 
the  imaginations  of  the  memory  of  man.  Where 
are  to-day  the  gods  of  Memphis  and  Thebes, 
those  who  dominated  that  mighty  civilisation 
on  the  banks  of  the  Nile  for  so  many  hund- 
reds of  years?  They  are  only  words  to  be 
interpreted  by  the  curious  and  the  learned. 
Where  are  the  religions  of  Greece  and  Rome, 
the  mighty  gods  who  used  to  sit  above  the 
clouds  on  Olympus  and  shake  the  earth  with 
their  tread  as  they  came  down  to  visit  the 
children  of  men?  Where  are  the  gods  that 
used  to  drive  in  their  chariots  across  the  sky  or 
ride  the  foaming  waves  of  the  sea  or  rule  over 
the  inhabitants  of  the  underworld  ?  They  are 
part  of  a  ctirious  story  which  we  are  fascinated 
by  as  we  read  the  record  of  the  past.  But 
they  no  longer  exist  as  realities  for  human 
thought  or  as  in  any  practical  way  touching 
human  life.  The  religion  of  the  Druids  is 
something  to'  be  guessed  at  as  we  look  at  the 
dolmens  and  the   rows  of  stones  which  they 


Relieions  and  Reliction 


't> 


have  set  up,  while  we  wonder  precisely  what 
they  may  have  meant  and  what  they  were  for. 
So  Odin  and  Thor  and  the  gods  of  our  Norse 
forefathers  are  now  only  names  in  their  Sagas, 
or  in  the  traditions,  the  stories  that  have  de- 
generated into  folk-lore,  and  which  pleased  us 
as  children, — or  as  grown-up  people,  if  we  keep 
the  sympathies  of  our  childhood. 

There  are,  indeed,  survivals  of  these  in 
names,  in  customs,  in  habits,  in  states  of  feel- 
ing, just  as  there  are  survivals  of  all  the  past 
out  of  which  we  have  developed.  Our  seven- 
day  week,  for  example,  runs  back  at  least  to 
the  Accadians,  older  than  Babylon  ;  and  the 
names  of  some  of  these  days  still  remind  us  of 
the  divinities  of  our  forefathers  of  the  North. 

But  these  religions,  and  hundreds  of  others, 
have  passed  away.  Of  course,  those  who  be- 
lieve that  Christianity  is  the  one  revealed 
religion,  and  that  all  the  others  are  the  natural 
products  of  the  human  mind,  find  sufficient 
reason  for  making  Christianity  an  exception  to 
the  rest  of  these.  But  let  us  note  some  of  the 
things  which  have  happened  to  Christianity 
itself,  so  that  we  may  see  that  it  is  not  so  very 
strange  that  the  students,  the  philosophers,  the 
scientists,  should  wonder  whether  it  is  to  live. 

Christianity  once  dominated   Europe.     Its 


6  Religions  and  Religion 

political  power  overshadowed  empires  and 
kingdoms.  It  was  able  to  setup  and  overturn 
thrones.  It  held  in  its  hands  the  destinies  of 
peoples.  It  could  bring  a  nation  by  its  ana- 
thema to  its  knees.  Where  is  this  power? 
Since  the  days  of  the  Renaissance  it  has 
gradually  waned  and  dwindled  away.  There  is 
no  nation  in  Europe  or  on  the  face  of  the 
earth  that  as  a  nation  to-day  stands  in  awe  of 
the  Church.  Even  Spain,  which  is  the  most 
subject  of  them  all,  dares  now  and  then  to 
assert  itself  as  against  the  decrees  of  the 
Vatican.  Education,  political  action,  many  of 
the  interests  of  men,  are  wrenched  from  the 
grasp  of  ecclesiastical  power ;  and  the  people 
stand  up  at  last  free. 

Then,  again,  the  whole  intellectual  realm 
used  to  be  dominated  by  the  Church.  Philo- 
sophy and  science  and  art  were  all  only 
provinces  in  the  Church's  universal  domain. 
One  after  another  they  have  revolted.  To-day 
art  goes  its  own  way,  asking  no  permission  of 
any  power,  following  its  own  ideals.  Education 
has  asserted  its  independence.  Philosophers 
do  not  any  longer  ask  whether  the  pope  is  to 
agree  with  their  systems  when  they  have  com- 
pleted their  work.  They  follow  what  they  be- 
lieve to  be  true.     Science  at  last  is  free. 


Religions  and  Religion    '  7 

About  three  hundred  years  ago  Bruno  was 
burned  in  Rome  for  daring  to  utter  his 
opinions.  To-day  no  man  asks  for  liberty 
to  express  his  beliefs  on  any  subject  whatso- 
ever. All  these  thinofs  are  taken  out  of  the 
hands  of  ecclesiastical  authority,  of  the  official 
religion  ;  and  men  are  free. 

Then  what «  change  has  come,  through  the 
progress  of  science,  over  the  way  in  which  men 
look  at  the  government  of  the  world  !  Kepler, 
who  was  born  in  the  sixteenth  century,  believed, 
even  after  he  had  discovered  the  three  orgeat 
laws  of  planetary  motion,  that  the  planets  were 
ruled  and  guided  in  their  courses  through  the 
heavens  by  deputy  angels  whose  business  it 
was  to  superintend  their  affairs.  He  knew 
of  no  power  except  this  delegated  divine  power 
by  which  to  account  for  the  motion  of  the 
heavenly  bodies.  When  Newton  discovered 
the  law  of  gravity,  demonstrated  it  to  be  true, 
the  Church  rose  in  alarm,  and  said  that  he  was 
taking  the  universe  out  of  the  hands  of  God 
and  putting  it  into  the  keeping  of  a  law. 

Not  a  great  many  years  ago  an  eclipse  was 
a  divine  and  special  sign  sent  with  some  relig- 
ious meaning  to  men.  You  remember  that  in 
the  Old  Testament  the  rainbow  was  the  pledge 
and  promise  of  God  that  he  would  not  send 


8  Religions  and  Religion 

another  flood  upon  the  earth.  The  whole  do- 
main of  nature  used  to  be  looked  upon  as  the 
scene  of  the  divine  interference,  with  special  pe- 
culiar activity  at  every  turn.  It  was  supposed 
that  God,  for  the  sake  of  reading  the  world  a 
religious  lesson,  would  make  the  sun  stand  still 
in  the  heavens,  would  make  the  shadow  go 
back  on  the  dial  of  a  king,  would  move  a  star 
from  its  orbit  and  send  it  wandering  through 
the  sky  to  direct  the  attention  of  men  to  some 
particular  spot  over  which  it  should  stand. 
God  was  the  one  who,  in  answer  to  prayer, 
sent  rain  ;  He  blighted  the  harvest  as  a  token 
of  His  displeasure  with  the  people. 

Science  has  changed  all  this  ;  and  now  there 
is  no  one  who  has  any  question  that  the  uni- 
verse, in  every  department,  is  governed  in  ac- 
cordance with  universal  and  unchanging  law. 
There  are  those  who  think  that  this  is  a  step 
towards  taking  religion  out  of  the  minds,  the 
beliefs,  the  convictions  of  man. 

One  of  the  finest  of  English  essayists,  who 
died  within  a  few  years,  has  a  chapter  devoted 
to  this  thought.  He  thinks  that  just  as  fast 
and  as  far  as  we  discover  that  the  universe  is 
governed  in  accordance  with  laws,  and  not  by 
a  system  of  arbitrary  interferences,  so  far  re- 
ligion is  dying  and  science  is  taking  its  place. 


Religions  and  Religion     '         9 

There  is  another  change  going  on.  We 
dare  now  to  study  and  criticise  church  history. 
We  trace  the  orio;in  and  orrowth  of  relictions. 
We  criticise  the  books  which  used  to  be  sup- 
posed to  be  above  all  question.  We  examine  -^ 
the  very  foundation  stones  on  which  religious 
ideas  and  theories  have  been  supposed  to 
rest.                   ^ 

Now  all  these  changes  —  and  this  is  the  only 
point  I  have  in  mind — go  to  make  the  gen- 
eral impression  that  religion  is  losing  its  uni- 
versal sway  over  the  intellect  and  the  heart 
and  the  life  of  the  world  ;  that  we  are  tending 
to  become  more  and  more  secular ;  that  we  are 
being  emancipated  from  the  rule  of  the  invisi- 
ble powers  in  the  sky  and  are  coming  to  man- 
asfe  our  own  affairs. 

I  wish  to  note  now  two  thinijs  which  can  be 
used  as  indicating  either  that  religion  is  dying 
or  that  simply  a  change  is  going  on  in  its  de- 
velopment. 

President  J.  G.  Schurman,  of  Cornell  Uni- 
versity, has  called  our  attention  to  the  fact 
that  all  religions  pass  through  three  stages  of 
growth.  First,  the  emphasis  is  placed  upon  the 
cult,  the  ceremony,  the  sacrifices,  the  ritual. 
Those  are  important.  The  gods  are  not  sup- 
posed to  care  much  how  people  believe  or  how 


lo  Religions  and  Religion 

they  behave.  So  long  as  they  bring  the  sacri- 
fices and  go  through  the  ceremony  with  exact 
punctiliousness,  all  is  well  and  the  gods  are 
satisfied.  By  and  by  humanity  reaches  the  next 
stage  in  religious  development.  The  cult  still 
remains,  perhaps,  the  ceremony,  the  ritual ;  but 
people  pay  less  attention  to  it.  The  emphasis 
is  not  there  any  longer.  The  principal  thing 
comes  to  be  the  belief,  the  creed. 

It  was  only  a  few  years  ago  that  the  empha- 
sis of  the  religious  life  was  placed  on  the  creed. 
It  was  what  men  believed  which  turned  the 
scale  as  they  were  being  weighed  in  the  divine 
balances.  Now,  President  Schurman  tells  us, 
we  are  outgrowing  that  phase  of  religious  de- 
velopment. People  keep  their  creeds  on 
record  in  their  books,  their  manuals ;  but  they 
no  longer  feel  bound  by  them.  They  are 
coming  at  last  to  say  that  the  only  essential 
thing  in  religion  is  the  spiritual  attitude,  how 
we  stand  as  related  to  the  life  of  God. 

In  one  way  it  may  be  said  that  this  indicates 
that  religion  in  the  old  sense  is  dying.  The 
ceremonial,  the  temples,  the  worship,  the 
creeds,  being  no  longer  of  great  importance,  if 
comes  to  be  merely  a  matter  of  how  one  feels 
and  thinks.  And  one  can  feel  and  think  with- 
out any  religious  institutions  at  all.      But  these 


Religions  and  Religion   '         ii 

facts  may  be  interpreted  to  mean  that,  as  the 
world  advances  and  becomes  more  and  more 
civilised  and  developed,  religion  comes  to  be 
more  a  matter  of  the  heart  and  the  life, — comes 
to  be  what  it  ouoht  to  be. 

Take  as  an  illustration  a  side  glance  at  gov- 
ernment. Government  is  not  supposed  to  be 
better  or  stro»2fer  on  account  of  larcjer  armies 
and  more  numerous  police,  more  judges  and 
courts  and  jails.  When  people  outgrow  the 
need  of  an  army,  when  no  longer  com- 
pelled to  have  a  police  force,  when  courts  of 
justice  find  no  more  business  to  employ  them, 
and  jails  are  not  needed,  government  has  not 
died  :  it  merely  means  that  the  laws  of  conduct 
and  of  life  have  been  transferred  to  the  heart ; 
and  the  people  are  living  out  the  most  perfect 
ideals  of  government  when  the  appearance  of 
the  government  has  passed  away. 

So  the  external  forms,  the  creed  and  the 
ritual  of  religion,  may  pass,  may  conceivably 
cease  to  exist  at  all ;  and  it  may  mean  only 
that  the  world  has  become  more  profoundly 
and  more  livingly  religious  than  it  has  ever 
been  in  the  past. 

Then  there  is  another  way  of  looking  at  the 
story  which  science  has  to  tell.  It  is  said  in 
some  directions  that  it  is  gradually  eliminating 


12  Religions  and  Religion 

God  from  His  world.  A  famous  French  as- 
tronomer—  Lalande  —  once  said  that  he  had 
swept  the  skies  with  his  telescope  and  had 
found  no  trace  of  God.  Very  impressive  and 
wise  at  first  sight  it  may  appear  ;  very  silly  and 
crude,  if  you  examine  the  statement.  Suppose 
a  man  should  say  that  he  had  scanned  the 
human  form  from  one  end  to  the  other  with  a 
microscope,  and  found  no  trace  of  a  thought 
or  a  mind.  That  would  not  be  wise  :  it  would 
simply  be  foolish.  We  do  not  discover  God 
or  mind  in  that  way. 

Another  famous  scientist  has  said  that,  in 
the  study  of  the  universe,  God  is  an  unneces- 
sary hypothesis.  True  in  one  way.  If  I  wish 
to  explain,  as  a  botanist,  the  development  and 
growth  of  a  tree,  I  do  not  need  to  think  any- 
thing about  God  ;  for  I  am  only  tracing  and 
discovering  laws.  If,  however,  I  wish  to  find 
the  ultimate  thing,  that  out  of  which  the  tree 
originally  sprang,  then  I  must  ask  a  question 
that  goes  deeper  than  all  that. 

So  science,  rightly  interpreted,  instead  of 
eliminating  God  from  His  world,  may  simply 
be  giving  us  a  new  conception  of  the  method' 
of  the  divine  government.  Instead  of  its  being 
a  matter  of  arbitrary  interference,  we  have 
learned  to  expect  the  divine  faithfulness  to  be 


Religions  and  Religion    '         13 

manifested  in  methods  and  according  to  laws 
which  never  change. 

We  are  comintr  to  think  of  the  forces  of  the 
universe,  as  they  act  in  accordance  with  a  cer- 
tain changeless  order,  as  being  only  the  habits, 
the  methods,  of  the  divine  working. 

Science  and  its  lesson  may  only  teach  us 
a  higher  and  grander  thought  of  the  universe 
and  of  God,  instead  of  being  interpreted  as 
a  power  which  has  gradually  elbowed  God  out 
of  His  world. 

I  wish  now  to  turn  to  the  positive  side.  I 
have  been  giving  you  some  of  the  reasons 
which  perhaps  excuse  the  superficial  thought 
of  the  time  and  explain  it.  Let  us  turn  now, 
and  see  if  we  can  find  some  reasons  for  believ- 
ing that  religion  is  the  central,  essential, 
eternal  thino-  in  human  life. 

Mr.  George  J.  Romanes,  the  famous  scien- 
tist, the  friend  of  all  the  leaders  of  scientific 
thought  and  life  in  England,  has  recently 
died.  Some  years  ago  he  published  a  book 
called  A  Cafidid  Examination  of  Theism. 
It  was  published  anonymously.  He  wished  to 
find  out  whether  his  theory  could  be  success- 
fully attacked  and  refuted,  and  therefore  let  it 
stand  on  its  own  merits  ;  so  it  did  not  go  out 
in  connection  with  his  name.     In  it  he  took  a 


14  Religions  and  Religion 

pronounced  position  as  a  scientific  atheist. 
He  said  there  was  no  need  of  God  to  scientific- 
ally explain  the  universe.  He  had  in  prepara- 
tion at  the  time  of  his  death  another  book, 
which  was  to  have  been  called  "  A  Candid 
Examination  of  Religion."  A  friend  of  his 
has  published  a  little  volume  called  Thoughts 
on  Religion,  being  merely  hints  as  to  what 
this  book  was  to  have  been  if  he  had  lived  to 
complete  it.  This  editor  is  a  Church  canon, 
and  has  probably  given  an  ecclesiastical  colour 
to  his  work  in  some  places. 

What  I  wish  to  call  your  attention  to  is  that 
he  had  completely  reversed  his  attitude,  and,  as 
a  scientist,  had  come  to  take  the  position  that 
religion  is  one  of  the  central  and  eternal  things 
in  life.  One  point  I  will  suggest  to  you,  which 
he  uses  as  a  scientific  argument.  He  says 
that  religion  may  be  regarded  as  one  of  the 
fundamental  instincts  of  the  world.  And  just 
as  any  animal  instinct  anywhere  is  justified  by 
the  fact  that  it  is  a  development  of  the  life  of 
the  race  of  beings  that  it  characterises,  called 
out  by  its  environment,  fixed  under  the  law  of 
heredity,  and  so  a  necessary  part  of  the  order' 
of  things,  so,  he  says,  religion  may  be  re- 
garded. It  isimiversal ;  it  reaches  back  to  the 
very  beginning  of  the  human  race.     It  is  one 


Religions  and  Religion  15 

of  the  instincts  of  humanity,  ineradicable, 
created  by  the  nature  of  things,  called  out  by 
man's  environment.  And  though  there  may 
be  certain  individuals  in  whom  it  may  not  have 
developed,  and  though  it  may  need  education 
and  training  to  bring  it  to  its  best,  this  is  only 
what  you  will  find  in  regard  to  any  instinct  in 
an  animal  or  a^bird.  There  are  cases  where  it 
is  weak  or  almost  non-existent ;  and  if  you 
place  a  bird  or  an  animal  in  a  new  environment, 
where  there  is  no  use  for  the  faculty  or  in- 
stinctive power  with  which  you  are  dealing,  it 
will  be  held  in  abeyance  for  the  time.  But 
this  does  not  militate  against  the  fact  that  the 
instinct  is  an  instinct,  and  so  is  a  part  of  the 
nature  of  things.  This  is  a  very  strong  scien- 
tific argument  for  the  perpetuity  of  religious 
thouorht  and  feelino-  and  life. 

I  wish  now  to  mention  another  name,  and 
hint  to  you  another  scientific  attitude.  Mr. 
John  Fiske,  of  Cambridge,  a  personal  friend 
and  disciple  of  Herbert  Spencer,  is  one  of  the 
most  notable  scientific  men  of  the  modern 
world.  In  a  little  book  called  Through 
Nature  to  God  he  develops  what  he  believes 
to  be  a  new  argument,  and  yet  one  which  he 
believes  cannot  be  set  aside.  He  says  that 
Herbert  Spencer  defines  life  as  "the  contin- 


i6  Religions  and  Religion 

uous  adjustment  of  inner  relations  to  outer  re- 
lations," Anything  that  is  alive  is  being  acted 
upon  by  its  environment  and  is  responding 
to  this  action.  A  tree,  for  example,  played  on 
by  the  air,  the  sun,  the  rains, — all  the  things 
that  surround  it, — responds  to  this  appeal  and 
grows,  puts  forth  leaf  and  bud  and  flower. 
There  is  a  constant  series  of  actions  and  reac- 
tions going  on  between  every  living  thing  and 
its  surroundings.  A  dead  thing,  on  the  other 
hand,  is  acted  upon  by  the  environment,  and 
a  series  of  changes  may  be  set  up  in  it,  just 
as  the  process  of  decay  goes  on  in  the  tree 
after  it  has  been  cut  down  ;  but  there  is  no 
reaction  that  we  call  life,  readjustment,  on 
the  part  of  the  dead  thing  as  related  to  its 
environment. 

Now  Fiske  calls  attention  to  the  fact  that, 
wherever  there  is  action  and  reaction  between 
the  livinof  thine  and  its  environment,  it  has 
always  been  that  the  living  thing  has  re^ 
sponded  .to  something  real  outside  that  has 
touched  it  and  called  out  the  change.  There 
is  not  a  case  in  the  whole  history  of  life  on 
the  earth,  dating  back  millions  of  years,  where 
the  living  thing  has  responded  to  an  unreality. 
Now  man  from  the  very  beginning  has  been 
responding  to  the  supposed  reality  of  God  and 


Religions  and  Religion    •         17 

of  a  spiritual  environment,  a  spiritual  universe 
surrounding  us  and  acting  uppn  us  ;  and  Fiske 
tells  us  that,  if  in  the  course  of  evolution  there 
has  at  this  point  suddenly  come  a  change  and 
reversal,  so  that  man  responds  to  an  unreality, 
to  what  does  not  exist,  it  is  something  absol- 
utely new  in  the  history  of  the  universe,  and 
puts  all  our  sq^ence  and  all  our  knowledge  to 
intellectual  confusion. 

Here,  then,  is  scientific  demonstration,  or 
something  very  near  it,  that  the  universe  con- 
tains some  reality  that  has  called  out  the  re- 
ligious thoughts  and  feelings  and  activities  of 
man. 

I  venture  to  say  that  years  ago,  before  I 
knew  anything  about  these  teachings  of  either 
Romanes  or  Fiske,  I  put  forward  and  devel- 
oped an  idea  which  seems  to  me,  though  in  an- 
other way,  to  include  both  of  theirs  and  to  be 
something  that  is  intellectually  inescapable. 
The  universe  stands  related  to  us,  I  have  said, 
as  the  die  stands  related  to  the  coin  that  it 
stamps.  If  you  find  some  mark  on  the  coin, 
if  you  find  it  on  every  one  of  the  coins,  you 
feel  perfectly  certain  that  there  is  some  reality 
in  the  die  that  stamps  the  coin,  that  accounts 
for  that  mark.  It  was  not  there  for  nothingr : 
it  did  not  simply  happen. 


1 8  Religions  and  Religion 

This  kind  of  argument  is  like  what  we  accept 
in  scientific  matters  everywhere.  The  lungs 
have  been  created  progressively  by  the  air. 
The  eye  has  been  progressively  created  by  the 
light.  The  ear  has  been  progressively  created 
by  sound.  In  saying  these  things  I  am  using 
language  in  a  popular  sense  and  not  with 
technical  accuracy  ;  but  the  idea  conveyed  is 
correct.  In  other  words,  the  universe  pressing 
upon  us  has  developed  us  and  created  us  what 
we  are.  So  wherever  you  find  any  universal 
or  permanently  characteristic  quality  in  human 
nature,  or  any  other  nature  for  that  matter, 
you  may  feel  perfectly  certain  that  there  is 
somethinof  in  the  universe  that  is  real,  that 
corresponds  to  it,  that  called  it  out,  that  made 
it. 

You  find  man,  then,  universally  a  religious 
being.  You  find  him  everywhere  believing 
that  he  is  fronted  with  an  invisible  universe. 
On  any  theory  you  choose  to  hold  of  this  uni- 
verse, it  has  made  us  what  we  are  ;  and  there 
must  be-^unless  the  universe  is  a  lie — a  reality 
corresponding  to  that  which  is  universal  and 
permanent  and  real  in  ourselves,  because  this 
universe  has  called  these  things  into  being, 
has  made  them  what  they  are. 

Now  I  must  run  rapidly,  if  I  may  trust  to 


Religions  and  Religion    •         19 


.^XWXX..       CV..V.        --v^xx^ 


your  patience  for  it,  over  another  line  of 
thought,  that  will  confirm  thi$  contention  and 
make  it,  it  seems  to  me,  valid  beyond  all 
possibility  of  contradiction.  Let  us  look  at 
religion  for  a  moment,  and  define  it. 

What  is  religion  ?  Not  yours,  not  mine,  not 
Christianity,  not  Paganism  of  any  kind  ;  but 
what  is  rcligio4i  ?  There  are  three  or  four  con- 
stituent elements.  First,  it  is  man's  thought, 
his  theory  concerning  the  relation  which  exists 
between  himself  and  the  Power  that  is  not 
himself,  the  Power  manifested  in  the  universe 
around  him  :  that  is  the  first  element  of  religion. 
Every  thought,  however,  every  theory  of  man 
that  touches  practical  life,  is  accompanied  by 
feeline ;  and  so  the  second  element  of  the 
religious  life  is  the  emotional.  Man  is  a  wor- 
shipping, hoping,  fearing,  trusting  being  as 
towards  the  Unseen  ;  and  the  emotions  will 
naturally  follow  after  and  be  governed  by  the 
quality  of  the  thought.  If  you  have  high  and 
noble  thoughts,  high  and  noble  feelings  go 
along  with  them.  If  you  have  thoughts  de- 
graded and  low,  you  will  have  feelings  of  fear 
and  dread  matching  them. 

Then,  in  the  third  place,  man's  theory,  his 
thought  and  his  feeling  being  permanent  and 
universal,  will  naturally  incarnate  themselves, 


20  Religions  and  Religion 

express  themselves,  in  outward  institutions  and 
actions ;  and  so  you  have  altars,  temples, 
sacrifices,  priesthoods,  hymns,  songs, — all  the 
ritual  of  the  world,  all  the  prayers,  all  that 
makes  up  the  external  form  of  religion.  And 
these  are  the  natural  and  necessary  expression 
of  the  thought  and  feeling  of  the  time. 

Then  there  is  something  beyond  the  thought 
and  the  emotion  and  the  ritual.  These  all 
exist  for  the  sake  of  what  ?  What  is  it  that  man 
is  trying  to  do  in  his  religious  life  ?  He  is  try- 
ing to  get  into  right  relations  with  God  :  with 
the  gods,  if  he  is  a  polytheist ;  with  God,  if  he 
is  a  monotheist.  So  from  the  very  beginning 
of  human  history  man  has  been  trying  to  find 
God  and  get  into  right  relations  with  Him;  and 
this  is  what  religion  has  always  and  every- 
where meant. 

Whatever  man's  theory  about  his  gods  or 
his  God  may  have  been,  or  about  himself,  he 
has  felt  the  certain  conviction  that  the  secret  of 
his  life  depended  on  his  getting  into  right  re- 
lations with  this  infinite  and  eternal  Power ; 
and  so  this  is  what  man  has  been  trying  to  do 
from  the  beginning  of  the  world. 

If  you  study  the  lowest  fetich  worship  and 
others  after'  it  up  to  the  highest  form  of 
Christianity,  you  will  find  that  everywhere  man 


Religions  and  Religion  21 

has  been  thinking  about  God  and  havinir  cer- 
tain emotions  concerning  Him,  and  has  been 
expressing;  these  facts  and  emotions  in  the 
external  life,  and  all  these  for  the  purpose  of 
finding  God  and  getting  into  right  or  helpful 
relations  with  Him.  That  is  what  man  has  been 
seeking  for.  ^o,  to  put  it  in  another  way,  you 
may  say  that  religion  is  man's  eternal  search 
for  the  secret  of  life. 

And  now  if  you  go  on, — if  you  call  it  going ; 
if  you  progress,— if  it  is  really  progress,— 
and  become  an  agnostic,  you  do  not  escape 
this  relation.  If  you  say,  I  do  not  know  any- 
thing about  the  universe,  that  does  not  touch 
the  question  that  the  universe  is  still  your 
father,  has  produced  you,  and  that  it  is  the 
most  vital  thing  in  the  world  that  you  under- 
stand the  laws  of  the  universe,  and  get  into 
right  relations  with  it. 

If  you,  as  you  think,  progress  still  farther, 
and  become  a  positive  atheist,  a  materialist, 
still  you  do  not  escape  this  relation.  The  uni- 
verse, if  it  is  only  dirt,  is  still  your  father,  has 
created  you ;  and  it  is  the  most  important 
thine  on  earth  that  you  understand  its  laws, 
and  get  into  right  relations  with  it. 

So  that,  no  matter  what  change  of  thought 
or    feeling   may    come     in     the    future,     this 


22  Religions  and  Religion 

relation  out  of  which  religion  springs  is  eternal, 
changeless,  vital ;  on  it  life  hinges.  So  in  this 
world,  or  any  other  world,  as  long  as  the  uni- 
verse lasts,  and  as  long  as  there  is  a  man  in  it 
who  can  think  and  feel  and  express  his  thought 
and  feeling  and  try  to  find  out  how  to  live,  so 
long  religion  must  remain. 

It  is  not  a  practical  question,  then,  as  to 
whether  religion  is  going  to  pass  away.  For 
you,  for  me,  for  all  men,  the  one  practical 
question  Is  as  to  what  relation  we  shall  volun- 
tarily sustain  towards  it.  Shall  we  try  to  make 
it  fine  and  high  and  noble  ?  Shall  we  turn  on 
the  light  from  every  quarter  and  try  to  see  It 
as  It  Is,  or  shall  we  shut  it  away  In  the  dark, 
away  from  Inspection  and  criticism  or  adequate 
comprehension  ?  Shall  we  let  It  grow,  as  all 
healthy  things  do,  towards  the  light,  or  shall  we 
pervert  It  by  fencing  It  away  In  shadow  ? 

Religion  will  remain.  What  we  shall  do 
about  It  is  .the  only  practical  question.  Art  Is 
In  the  world.  What  Is  your  relation  towards 
it  ?  You  do  not  destroy  It  if  you  neglect  it ;  you 
only  make  yourselves  poorer.  Science  Is  In  the 
world :  you  do  not  destroy  It  If  you  are  Ignor- 
ant of  It;  you  simply  Impoverish  your  own  being. 

So  all  high  and  fine  things  that  humanity 
has  developed  are  In  the  world.     You  do  not 


Religions  and  Religion  23 

destroy  them  because  you  fail  to  incorporate 
them  into  your  own  lives ;  you  only  make 
yourselves  poor  and  weak  because  of  your  lack 
concerning  these  great  things. 

Now  which  are  the  essential  things  in  the 
hiofhest  religious  life  that  the  world  has  been 
able  to  conceive  ?  Three  points  I  must 
suoforest : 

It  does  not  matter  much  whether  the  ritual 
goes  or  not.  Ritual  is  fine  if  it  helps,  if  it  is 
of  service.  It  does  not  matter  much,  we  say, 
about  the  creed.  I  think  it  matters  a  great 
deal,  because  in  the  long  run  we  become  what 
we  believe.  It  makes  all  the  difference  in  the 
world  whether  our  ideas  are  accurate  or  not, 
because  ultimately  they  touch  and  shape  our 
methods  of  living. 

But  there  are  noble  men  —  grand,  sweet, 
true  men — whose  intellectual  theories  are  all 
wrong,  and  whose  ritual  may  not  in  the  slight- 
est degree  appeal  to  us.  And  every  true  man 
who  thinks  will  say,  "  Better  be  the  grand  and 
true  and  noble  liver,  with  ideas  all  awry  and 
with  practices  in  the  way  of  ritual  that  are  in- 
adequate and  outworn,  than  to  miss  the  life, 
and  be  ever  so  true  in  the  theory  and  methods." 
These  may  or  may  not  pass  away.  It  does  not 
matter.     But  we  have  come  at  last  to  believe 


24  Religions  and  Religion 

that  at  the  centre  of  this  universe  —  what  we 
call  God  —  is  love.  Love  is  the  heart  of  the 
world.  Love  is  the  power  that  is  gradually 
transforming  and  elevating  humanity,  and 
makinof  it  over  into  the  imao^e  of  the  ideal. 

The  highest  religion,  then,  will  issue  in  the 
loving  life.     That  is  the  first  great  thing. 

The  next  is  the  truth, —  the  truth  which 
leads  us  to  a  right  conception  of  things,  and 
which  at  last  issues  in  the  loving  life. 

And  then  the  last  great  element  of  the 
highest  religion  which  the  world  has  yet  devel- 
oped is  service.  No  man  can  be  his  best 
alone.  No  man  can  isolate  himself  from  his 
fellows  without  losing  more  than  that  of 
which  he  robs  his  fellows. 

The  life  of  truth,  the  life  of  love,  the  life  of 
service, —  he  who  lives  this  life  lives  the  high- 
est life  that  religion  as  yet  is  able  to  conceive. 
We  cannot  dream  of  its  outgrowing  these 
ideals, —  truth,  love,  service.  This  is  what  the 
religious  aspirations  of  the  world  have  aimed 
at  as  the  one  thing  to  be  desired  and  striven 
for.  And  we  feel  perfectly  certain  that  when, 
it  is  attained  the  dream  of  the  agfes  will  have 
been  realised. 

This,  then,  is  the  permanent,  the  central, 
the  eternal  thing  in  religion. 


II 

THEOLC^GIES  AND  THEOLOGY 

IN  the  last  chapter  we  noted  the  fact  that  the 
pathway  of  human  history  is  strewn  with 
fallen  religions  as  our  country  roadsides  are 
strewn  in  the  autumn  with  fallen  leaves.  At 
the  same  time  we  saw  the  deeper  fact  that, 
while  religions  have  died,  religion  has  always 
survived.  We  need  now  to  attend  to  a  con- 
sideration which  goes  deeper  still,  as  making 
clearer  this  thought  and  emphasising  it. 

In  one  sense  religions  have  died.  In  an- 
other sense  they  have  not.  It  depends  upon 
our  definition  of  religion.  If  we  talk  of  the 
religion  of  ancient  Egypt,  that,  so  far  as  its 
forms,  its  doctrines,  its  worship  are  concerned, 
has  passed  away.  So,  if  we  consider  the 
religions  of  ancient  Greece  or  Rome,  the 
religion  of  our  forefathers  of  the  North,  they 
have  passed  away  :  they  do  not  any  longer 
exist  among  men.  And  yet,  if  we  go  a  little 
deeper,  and  note  that  religion  is  not  essentially 

25 


26  Theologies  and  Theology 

the  thoughts  which  men  cherish,  the  theories 
which  they  have  elaborated  about  God  and 
the  universe  and  human  nature,  then  we  shall 
see  that  the  essential  thinor  in  the  relieion  has 
not  died ;  only  man's  thinking  about  it  has 
changed. 

Religion  is  something  deeper  than  thinking. 
It  is  feeling,  it  is  love,  it  is  a  sense  of  depend- 
ence and  trust,  it  is  aspiration,  it  is  hope,  it  is 
that  uplift  of  the  heart  and  nature  which  we 
call  worship,  it  is  the  onlook  towards  and  the 
pursuit  of  the  ideal.  These  have  never  died 
since  the  world  began.  They  have  existed 
under  every  name,  in  every  nation,  under 
every  outside  form,  and  have  been  the  heart 
and  soul  of  the  religious  search  of  man. 

Religion  in  this  sense  we  might  think  of  as 
like  that  wonderful  stream  which,  Hebrew 
story  tells  us,  followed  the  Israelites,  after 
Moses  had  smitten  the  rock,  throughout  all 
their  wanderings.  Wherever  they  went,  the 
stream  went  with  them.  It  quenched  their 
thirst,  in  it  they  could  bathe  and  make  them- 
selves clean,  in  it  they  could  see  the  reflection 
of  the  sun  by  day  and  the  stars  by  night.  It 
sang  and  crooned  to  them  when  they  were 
weary,  it  fertihsed  its  banks,  it  made  the 
shrubs  grow  green,  it  entered  into  the  beauty 


Theologies  and  Theology  ?7 

and  the  perfume  of  the  flowers.  It  was  life 
and  sweetness  and  comfort  and  rest  to  them 
through  all  those  forty  years. 

That  is  the  beautiful  poem  story  which  has 
come  down  to  us  from  the  past ;  and  it  may 
fitly  symbolise  the  office  and  the  eternal  com- 
panionship of  ^-eligion.  In  all  ages,  however 
poor  or  ignorant  any  tribe  or  people  may  have 
been,  religion  has  whispered  to  them  of  an  un- 
seen origin,  divine  parenthood  and  childhood. 
It  has  been  comfort  and  peace  and  hope.  It 
has  been  the  poetry  of  their  existence. 

The  late  Dean  Everett  of  the  Divinity 
School  at  Harvard,  who  has  so  recently  passed 
away,  has  given  a  most  beautiful  description 
of  this  kind  of  religion  of  which  I  am  speak- 
ing. He  said  :  "  Religion  is  the  poetry  of  life 
believed  in."  Religion  lifts  us  above  the  sor- 
did, the  commonplace,  the  humdrum,  the  grind- 
ing, depressing  facts  of  life,  and  brings  us  into 
communion  with  the  eternally  young,  the  di- 
vinely beautiful. 

Religion,  then,  in  this  profound  sense  of  the 
word,  has  never  died.  It  is  only,  after  all, 
theology  that  has  died  ;  for  the  "  theory  of 
religion  "  is  what  we  mean  by  the  word  "  the- 
ology." It  is  the  external  framework  of  that 
which  men  have  wrouo;ht  out  as  the  result  of 


cv 


28  Theologies  and  Theology     • 

their  study ;  and  the  thought  side  of  things  is 
always  wrong  at  the  beginning,  and  of  neces- 
sity is  always  growing  and  changing. 

We  have  already  seen,  also,  that  certain 
scientific  men  of  great  eminence  and  power 
had  given  us  such  definitions  of  religion 
as  seemed  to  warrant  our  supposing  that 
science  itself  was  back  of  religion  as  a  demon- 
stration of  its  reality  and  claim.  Mr.  Ro- 
manes, as  we  have  seen,  has  told  us  that 
religion  is  an  instinct,  carrying  with  it  as  much 
authority  as  do  any  of  the  instincts  which  are 
implanted  in  the  lower  forms  of  life  ;  and  Mr. 
John  Fiske  has  told  us  that,  when  we  take  the 
scientific  definition  of  life,  we  find  that  we  are 
acting  and  reacting  in  supposed  relations  with 
an  unseen  universe  around  us  ;  and,  if  this  un- 
seen universe  be  not  real,  then  from  the  begin- 
ning of  the  world  men  have  been  deluded  and 
have  responded  to  a  something  that  does  not 
exist ;  a  behaviour  which  is  unlike  anything 
else  which -is  to  be  found  in  the  whole  history 
of  the  world's  development. 

I  reminded  you  also  of  the  fact  that,  since 
the  universe  has  created  us,  whatever  is  per- 
manently in  ^us  must  correspond  to  something 
permanent  in  the  nature  of  things.  But  an 
instinct  does  not  make  mistakes.     So  some  one 


Theologies  and  Theology  '        29 

who  thinks  a  Httlc  loj^ically  and  carefully  may 
object,  and  say  :  The  animals,' in  following  the 
guidance  of  their  instinct,  always  go  direct  to 
the  point :  the  bee  never  makes  a  mistake  in 
the  construction  of  his  honeycomb.  Animals, 
no  matter  what  they  are  in  search  of,  if  they 
follow  the  instinctive  leadings  of  their  own 
nature,  always^'go  right.  The  carrier-pigeon, 
no  matter  how  far  he  may  be  from  home,  when 
he  lifts  himself  into  the  air  and  takes  his  bear- 
ings, always  starts  straight  for  his  nest  ;  and 
the  birds  that  in  the  fall  and  spring  gather  as 
if  to  take  counsel  together,  and  then  start  on 
their  long  journey  to  the  south  and  then  back 
again  to  the  north,  do  not  make  any  mistakes. 
They  follow  this  mysterious  something  which 
we  call  "  instinct "  ;  and  they  always  go  right. 
So  some  one  may  object :  If  religion  be  an 
instinct,  if  it  has  been  created  by  the  universe 
in  response  to  unseen  but  veritable  realities, 
ought  it  not  also  to  be  as  infallible  as  other 
instincts  ?  Ought  it  not  to  guide  us  accurately  ? 
Ought  there  to  be  so  much  crudity,  mistake, 
and  jarring  as  there  have  always  been  in  the 
history  of  the  religion  of  the  world  ?  For  one 
of  the  saddest  things  in  all  human  history  is 
the  fact  that  the  bitterest  hatreds,  the  deep- 
est and  most   impassable  divisions,  the   most 


30  Theologies  and  Theology 

bloodshed,  have  come  from  religious  animos- 
ities and  oppositions. 

How  can  we  understand  this?  It  seems  to 
me  that  it  grows  out  of  the  necessary  fact  that 
man  has  something  superadded  to  the  instinct. 
The  instinct  may  be  true,  vital,  real,  perman- 
ent ;  but,  if  man  is  to  grow  and  become  some- 
thing grander  than  the  animals  with  whom  he 
shares  a  part  of  his  nature,  he  must  come  up 
into  the  realm  of  independent  thinking,  into 
freedom,  into  self-originated  activities.  Reason 
is  something  above  and  beyond  instinct  ;  and, 
while  it  marks  man  as  higher  and  grander  than 
all  the  creatures  that  are  beneath  him,  it  at  the 
same  time  is  something  that  changes,  pro- 
gresses, learns  year  by  year,  and  something 
that  is  perpetually  liable  to  error.  For  it  is 
only  by  making  a  thousand  mistakes  and  cor- 
recting them  that  man  learns  the  great  lesson 
of  how  to  live. 

To  illustrate  what  I  mean  in  its  practical 
application,  suppose  the  birds,  the  homing 
birds,  besides  having  the  instinct  to  seek  the 
place  which  their  ancestors  have  sought  for 
countless  generations,  and  from  whom  they 
have  inherited  this  instinctive  tendency  to 
seek, — instead  of  doing  that,  they  should  have 
the  gift  of  reason  bestowed  upon  them  ;  should 


Theologies  and  Theology   '       31 

meet  in  council  and  discuss  the  incidents  of  the 
last  journey,  the  dangers  they  met  with,  the 
difficulties,  the  storms,  and  should  wonder  if 
there  were  not  some  better  way.  Do  you  not 
see  how  this  higher  faculty  of  reason  would  add 
an  element  of  uncertainty,  a  confusion,  a  chance 
for  discussion  and  difference  of  opinion ;  and 
we  should  hav^  presented  to  us  over  again  in 
this  curious  fashion  all  the  phenomena  of  man's 
attempt  to  find  his  way,  and  of  his  mistakes  in 
the  attempt  ? 

The  point  I  wish  to  emphasise,  in  passing, 
is  that  this  confusion  arising  out  of  reason — 
discussion,  difference  of  opinion,  crudity  of 
thought — does  not  invalidate  the  fact  that  re- 
ligion is  an  instinct,  and  that  it  is  a  permanent, 
an  inherited,  and  eternal  part  of  human  nature 
and  human  life.  Men  may  discuss,  as  they  have 
for  countless  ages,  the  nature  of  light.  They 
know  very  little  about  it ;  yet  it  does  not  invalid- 
ate the  fact  that  light  will  show  them  the  way, 
that  they  can  walk  in  it.  It  does  not  invalidate 
the  fact  that  sun-rays  make  the  plants  grow  and 
the  flowers  open.  They  may  theorise  and  specu- 
late as  much  as  they  please  as  to  how  this  is 
done  ;  but  the  fact  is  indisputable.  So  men 
may  speculate  about  the  nature  of  electricity ; 
but  electricity  is  still  a  power  that  is  moving 


32  Theologies  and  Theology 

the  mechanism  of  the  modern  world  and  illumi- 
nating the  planet  as  it  has  never  been  illumined 
before.  No  one  knows  what  electricity  is. 
People  may  discuss  endless  theories  concerning 
it ;  but  the  fact  that  it  is  life  and  light  remains. 

So  men  may  discuss  endlessly  their  theories 
of  religion  ;  but  the  fact  that  religion  is  com- 
fort and  life  and  health  and  hope  and  peace 
remains.  And  just  as  the  most  ignorant  per- 
son, who  would  not  be  able  to  read  a  discus- 
sion as  to  the  nature  of  light,  may  still  walk  in  it 
as  well  as  the  wise,  so  the  poorest  and  hum- 
blest in  any  department  of  human  life  or  in 
any  religion  may,  with  all  his  crude  and  false 
and  wrong  theories  of  the  universe  and  of  God 
and  man,  find  comfort,  peace,  and  strength  and 
help  in  the  consciousness  that  he  is  a  child  of 
God  and  that  God  cares  for  him,  in  communion 
with  God  ;  in  the  feeling  that  from  Him  come 
light  and  strength  and  help  such  as  he  can  get 
from  no  other  source. 

In  the 'nature  of  things,  as  I  hinted  a  page 
or  two  ago,  our  theories,  our  theologies,  must 
change.  The  threefold  nature  of  man  con- 
stitutes a  threefold  necessity  for  this  change  ; 
so  that  the  people  who  cry  out  against  the 
fact  that  theological  opinion  wanes  and  passes 
away,  those  who  are  afraid  of  this  fact,  think- 


Theologies  and  Theology  '       33 

ing  that  it  touches  the  essential  religious  life 
of  the  world,  those  who  rejoice  in  the  fact  be- 
cause they  believe  that  religion  itself  is  going 
to  pass  away, — none  of  these  people,  it  seems 
to  me,  are  very  wise. 

Consider  for  a  moment.  Man  comes  on  to 
this  planet  a  child,  ignorant  of  himself,  ignorant 
of  his  origin,  "ignorant  of  his  home,  looking 
with  eyes  of  wonder  at  the  skies  above  him, 
knowing  nothing  of  any  of  these  things.  He 
begins  to  question,  to  speculate,  to  investigate, 
to  study.  He  naturally  thinks  that  the  earth 
is  flat,  that  the  sky  is  only  a  little  way  off,  that 
the  stars  are  much  smaller  than  the  sun  and 
moon.  How  could  he  have  any  different  idea  ? 
He  begins  to  speculate  in  regard  to  the  invis- 
ible and  unseen  powers  around  him,  as  to  his 
own  nature,  by  and  by  coming  to  think  of  him- 
self as  dual,  having  a  soul  or  being  a  soul, 
whichever  way  he  chooses  to  put  it ;  but  of 
necessity  his  ideas  concerning  all  these  sub- 
jects are  childish  and  crude  and  inadequate. 
So  far  as  they  touch  the  religious  life  of  the 
world,  they  constitute  his  theology ;  and  the 
priesthoods  of  every  age  have  always  claimed 
that  the  theological  teachings  of  their  little 
scheme  of  religion  have  been  infallibly  revealed, 
and  that  it  was  wicked  to  question. 


34  Theologies  and  Theology 

This  has  been  the  universal  belief  of  the 
world,  growing  out  of  man's  reverence  for 
what  he  supposed  to  be  divine  truth.  But  the 
very  stating  of  the  facts  shows  the  absolute 
necessity  of  man's  outgrowing  all  these  theories 
if  he  is  ever  to  become  civilised,  if  he  is  ever 
to  grow  to  be  something  finer  and  better  than 
he  was  when  he  began.  As  Paul  says  of  the 
individual  life,  "  When  I  was  a  child,  I  thought 
as  a  child,  I  spake  as  a  child,  understood  as  a 
child,"  so  the  race,  when  it  was  a  child,  thought 
and  spake  and  understood  as  a  child.  As  it 
grows,  it  leaves  behind  its  childish  thoughts 
and  accepts  better  ones. 

But  that  does  not  mean  that  the  thoughts  of 
to-day  are  permanent.  Theologies,  all  of  them, 
in  their  very  nature  are  passing.  They  can- 
not remain,  because  we  know  in  part  only  ;  and, 
when  we  come  to  know  a  little  better,  that 
which  is  in  part  is  done  away.  Not  only  the 
intellectual  nature  of  man,  but  the  moral  nature 
of  man,  cfetermines  this  as  a  necessity.  It 
was  very  easy  for  barbaric  people  to  have 
barbaric  thoughts  about  God,  to  think  of  Him 
as  passionate,  to  think  of  Him  as  partial,  as 
jealous,  as  moved  and  instigated  by  all  the  low 
motives  and  passions  which  instigated  and 
moved  themselves.     This  was  inevitable.     A 


Theologies  and  Theology  35 

man  to-day  cannot  tliink  any  higher  thought 
of  God  than  his  highest  thought  of  humanity, 
pursued  as  far  as  he  can  push  it  towards  the 
infmite.  So  men  in  the  past  have  never  been 
able  to  think  any  better  of  God  than  they  have 
been  able  to  think  of  themselves. 

But  the  time  comes  when  men  must  feel 
differently  about  God.  They  cannot  any 
longer  endure  these  crude,  these  immoral  ideas. 
The  Old  Testament  has  incidents  where  the 
writers  authoritatively  represent  God  as  doing 
things  that  we  shouki  call  infamous  if  any  man 
did  them  to-day.  It  was  perfectly  natural, 
however.  They  thought  the  best  they  were 
capable  of  thinking  at  the  time.  But  a  point 
is  reached  at  last  when  men  feel  as  did  Whit- 
tier  when  he  put  into  a  beautiful  poem  his 
higher  moral  ideals  of  the  love  and  ten- 
derness of  the  Father,  and  when,  in  answer 
to  protest  against  this, — which  was  supposed 
to  be  dangerous  doctrine, — he  said,  in  two 
verses  in  his  *'  Eternal  Goodness  "  (the  most 
remarkable  religious  poem  of  the  world,  1 
think)  : 

**I  trace  your  lines  of  argument, 
Your  logic  linked  and  strong, 
I  weigh  as  one  who  dreads  dissent 
And  fears  a  doubt  as  wrong  ; 


36  Theologies  and  Theology 

"But  yet  my  human  hands  are  weak 
To  hold  your  iron  creeds  ; 
Against  the  words  ye  bid  me  speak 
The  heart  within  me  pleads," 

Men  come  to  that  point.  The  immoral  con- 
ceptions of  the  theologies  of  the  past  cannot 
longer  be  held,  because  men  become  better 
than  the  theological  picture  of  their  God ; 
and  they  can  no  longer  worship  it. 

And  then  there  is  a  spiritual  growth, — not 
only  the  intellectual  and  moral, — a  spiritual 
growth,  a  spiritual  conception  of  God.  It  was 
perfectly  natural  for  the  Hebrews — because 
they  shared  this  idea,  a  similar  one  with  all  the 
tribes  about  them — to  think  of  God  as  a  being 
whom  they  could  shut  up  in  a  box  which  they 
called  their  ark,  and  carried  in  battle.  A  nd  when 
the  Philistines  captured  the  ark,  they  supposed 
they  had  lost  their  God  along  with  it,  and  that 
therefore  they  had  lost  their  power  to  fight 
until  they  got  Him  back  again.  This  is  per- 
fectly natural  in  a  certain  stage  of  development. 

It  was  perfectly  natural  for  Rachel  to  think 
that  she  could  not  possibly  live  in  a  strange 
country  without  her  gods.  So  she  stole  the 
images,  and  hid  them  in  the  furniture  of  her 
camel  and  sat  upon  them,  in  order  to  have 
them  go  with  her. 


Theologies  and  Theology  37 

But  the  spiritual  conception  of  the  world 
has  outgrown  that  childishness.  Though  it  is 
imbedded  in  a  thousand  creeds,  it  is  not  vital 
and  cannot  be  vital  any  longer.  Away  above 
that  is  the  conception  of  Isaiah,  which  must 
have  sounded  sublime  to  the  people  of  his  time, 
when  he  speaks  of  God  as  sitting  on  the  circle 
of  the  earth,  and  of  the  inhabitants  as  being  like 
grasshoppers  at  His  feet.  And  yet  that  does 
not  sound  very  spiritual  or  significant  to  us. 
How  much  grander  are  the  words  of  Jesus  to  the 
woman  at  the  well !  "  Neither  in  this  mount- 
ain nor  yet  at  Jerusalem  shall  men  worship  the 
Father.  God  is  Spirit,  and  they  that  worship 
Him  must  worship  Him  in  spirit  and  in  truth." 

The  fact,  then,  that  man  is  a  being  who 
starts  as  a  child  and  who  intellectually  and 
morally  and  spiritually  grows,  carries  with  it 
the  necessity  that  the  theologies  of  the  world 
shall  be  gradually  outgrown. 

Another  point  :  I  read  with  intense  interest 
when  I  was  a  young  man  a  book  written  by 
Dr.  Draper,  called  The  Conflict  between  Re- 
ligion and  Science.  The  title  of  the  book  is 
accurate  enough,  if  you  follow  that  definition 
of  reliofion  which  makes  it  consist  in  its  intel- 
lectual  theories  ;  but  if  you  will  note  that  the 
intellectual   theories    are    not    necessarily   the 


> 


38  Theologies  and  Theology 

religion  at  all,  but  only  the  theology,  then  the 
title  of  the  book  is  all  wrongr, 

Ex-Presiclent  White  of  Cornell  has  pub- 
lished a  work  for  which  he  has  taken  a  bet- 
ter title.  He  calls  it  The  Warfare  of  Science 
with  Theology.  There  has  been  plenty  of 
warfare  with  theology  ;  but,  rightly  defined, 
there  never  has  been,  and  never  can  be,  any 
conflict  between  science  and  religion.  You 
may  have  a  hundred  theories  concerning  the 
nature  of  light,  and  there  may  be  conflict 
between  those  theories  ;  but  there  can  be  no 
conflict  between  science  and  the  light.  You 
may  have  theories  about  electricity  which  may 
fight  each  other  for  ages,  but  science  can  have 
no  conflict  with  electricity. 

There  can  be  no  conflict  between  religion 
and  science,  any  more  than  there  can  be  a 
warfare  between  science  and  the  equator  or 
science  and  the  north  pole.  Religion  is  a 
fact,  an  universal  and  eternal  element  in  human 
nature  and  human  life ;  and  all  Science  has 
to  do  with  it  is  to  observe  it,  to  study  it,  to 
trace  its  development,  to  explain  it  if  she  can. 
But  she  has  no  conflict  with  it,  no  warfare 
against  it.  ^The  warfare  is  always  in  the 
intellectual  realm  of  theories,  a  fight  between 
men's  thouorhts  concernine  thinofs. 


Theologies  and  Theology  39 

And  it  is  tliis  which  has  always  separated 
peoples.  Religion  never  separated  man  and 
man.      It  cannot  in  the  nature  of  things. 

If  we  read  the  ethnic  scriptures  of  the  world, 
we  may  see  how  profound  thinkers  in  every 
ao-e  have  eone  down  to  this  fundamental  fact 
of  the  unity  of  religions. 

"  The  object  of  all  religions  is  alike.  All  men  seek 
the  object  of  their  love,  and  all  the  world  is  love's 
dwelling." 

Again  : 

"  Why  talk  of  a  mosque  or  church  ?  He  alone  is  a  true 
Hindu  whose  heart  is  just  ;  and  he  alone  is  a  true  Mo- 
hammedan whose  life  is  true." 

And  once  more  : 

"  The  Supreme  Being  is  sometimes  with  him  who 
counts  his  prayers  on  sacred  beads  in  the  mosque  and 
sometimes  with  him  who  bows  down  before  idols  in  the 
temple.  He  is  the  companion  of  the  Hindu,  the  intimate 
of  the  Mohammedan,  the  friend  of  the  Christian,  and 
the  confidant  of  the  Jew." 

And  once  again  : 

"  If  thou  art  a  Mussulman,  go  stay  with  the  Franks  ; 
if  a  Christian,  seek  the  Jews  ;  if  a  Shiah,  mix  with  the 
Schismatics  :  whatever  thy  religion,  associate  with  men 
of  opposite  persuasion.  If  in  hearing  their  discourses 
thou  art  not  in  the  least  moved,  but  canst  mix  with 
them  freely,  thou  hast  attained  peace  and  art  a  master 
of  creation." 


40  Theologies  and  Theology 

These  are  hints  of  how  some  of  the  deepest 
thinkers  have  perceived  this  reality  in  the 
past  ;  and  we  are  appreciating  it  to-day  more 
and  more.  Take  an  illustration.  Years  ago, 
as  you  know,  in  Spain  there  was  a  wide-spread 
persecution  against  the  Moors,  who  were  Mo- 
hammedans in  their  religion,  and  they  were 
driven  out  of  the  country. 

Now  note  :  The  Moors  were  better  scholars 
than  the  natives.  They  were  just  as  good  in 
their  characters  and  lives.  They  were  true 
and  noble  in  their  morals — at  least  as  true 
and  noble  as  were  their  persecutors.  What 
was  it  that  separated  them  ?  What  was  it 
that  led  to  the  persecution  ?  In  religion, 
deep  down  beneath  their  intellectual  differ- 
ences, they  worshipped,  though  under  other 
names,  the  same  God  ;  and  they  believed  that 
He  required  of  them  substantially  the  same 
courses  of  conduct.  It  was  their  intellectual 
theories  that  separated  them  into  hostile 
camps.  The  Christians  had  come  to  believe 
that  God  had  cast  out  the  Mussulman  because 
he  was  an  infidel,  an  unbeliever, — not  a  bad 
liver, — an  unbeliever,  and  that  it  was  their 
most  sacred  duty  to  drive  him,  so  far  as  they 
could,  from  the  face  of  the  earth.  They  be- 
lieved that  God  would  visit  their  country  with 


Theologies  and  Theology  41 

punishments  and  penalties  if  they  tolerated 
the  unbeliever  among  them.  It  was  not  a 
question  of  religion.  It  was  a  question  of 
intellectual  belief  ;  that  is,  of  theology. 

So  it  has  been  in  all  ages.  It  is  a  very 
striking  fact  that  if,  anywhere  round  the  world, 
you  go  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  or  five  thous- 
and feet  above  the  level  of  the  sea,  you  will 
find  substantially  the  same  kinds  of  shrubs 
and  trees  and  flowers  everywhere, — not  identi- 
cal, not  of  the  same  name,  but  similar, — at  the 
same  altitude  above  the  level  of  the  sea.  So 
as  you  travel  round  the  world,  in  any  nation, 
and  rise  to  the  same  altitude  of  civilised  de- 
velopment, you  will  find  everywhere  sub- 
stantially the  same  ethical  ideas,  the  same 
conceptions  of  conduct,  the  same  thoughts 
about  right  and  wrong.  And  this  of  necessity, 
because  these  are  wrought  out  by  human 
experience  in  the  course  of  man's  evolution. 

So  it  is  not  these  that  have  separated  peo- 
ple. People  have  dreamed  that  their  God 
hated  with  bitter  hatred  the  man  who  did  not 
believe  as  they  did.  You  remember  how 
Jesus  rebuked  his  disciples,  James  and  John, 
on  a  certain  occasion.  They  were  passing 
throuofh  a  Samaritan  villacre,  and  the  villa<j;;ers 
did  not  treat  them  as  they  thought  they  ought 


42  Theologies  and  Theology 

to  be  treated ;  and  the  disciples  said,  "  Master, 
wouldst  thou  that  we  call  down  fire  from 
heaven  and  consume  them,  as  did  one  of  the 
ancient  prophets  ?  "  And  Jesus  turned  and 
rebuked  them,  and  said,  "  Ye  know  not  what 
manner  of  spirit  ye  are  of."  Jesus  noted  the 
fact  that,  wherever  there  is  a  heart  feeling 
after  God,  He  is  not  far  off ;  that  there  is  the 
essential  religious  life,  no  matter  what  the 
theory  ;  and  that  this  life  ought  to  bind  peo- 
ple together  in  a  common  sense  of  sonship  of 
a  common  Father. 

Just  at  the  present  time — and  it  is  a  curious 
phase  of  our  development  worthy  of  careful 
consideration  —  theological  preaching,  theo- 
logical writing,  theological  discussion  gener- 
ally, is  not  very  popular,  I  talk  with  people 
in  Presbyterian,  Congregational,  Episcopal,  and 
Methodist  churches,  and  they  say  :  "  Our 
minister  does  not  preach  theology  any  more  : 
he  preaches  conduct  and  life.  We  do  not 
want  to  hear  theological  preaching."  Curi- 
ous ;  for  let  us  see  what  it  means.  It  does 
not  mean  that  people  are  not  interested  in 
theology  as  much  as  they  ever  were,  as  it  is 
easy  to  make  clear.  It  means  that  they  have 
outgrown  the 'theologies  of  the  past,  are  tired 
of  them,  no  longer  believe  in  them,  that  they 


Theologies  and  Theology  43 

are  no  longer  vital,  that  they  represent  a  lower 
stage  of  thought  and  life  to  their  minds. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  if  we  analyse  a 
little  carefully  we  shall  find  that  the  new 
thought  which  they  do  like,  this  matter  of  life 
and  character,  is  just  as  theological  as  the  old. 
So  while  I  ha\;e  said  that  theologies  are  dying 
and  passing  away,  and  constantly  being  out- 
grown in  every  age,  I  wish  to  emphasise  the 
fact  that  theology  in  the  singular  is  as  per- 
manent a  thing  in  human  life  as  religion  itself. 
It  can  never  be  outgrown. 

If,  for  example,  I  dislike  the  theology  of  the 
past  concerning  God,  and  do  not  want  to  hear 
that  any  more — if  I  do  not  care  anything 
about  the  Doctrine  of  Election,  of  Foreordin- 
ation,  of  Eternal  Punishment,  if  I  want  to 
hear  about  conduct,  about  love,  honesty,  truth, 
mutual  help,  human  service,  and  thus  think 
I  have  outgrown  theology,  then  I  must  stop 
and  consider  for  a  moment.  A  man  tells  me 
to  be  good.  I  ask  him  :  "  What  is  goodness  ? 
What  do  you  mean  by  it,  and  why  should  I 
be  good  ?"  Then  he  must  theologise  in  order 
to  answer  :  he  must  give  me  a  theory  of  the 
universe,  and  of  human  nature,  and  of  God 
and  human  life,  in  defining  what  goodness  is, 
and  giving  me  a  reason  why  I  should  be  good. 


44         Theologies  and  Theology 

So,  when  we  say  the  world  is  outgrowing 
theology,  we  mean  it  is  outgrowing  an  old 
type,  and  that  a  new  type  is  coming  to  take 
its  place.  No  sermon  can  possibly  be  preached 
without  there  being  implied  in  it  a  theory 
of  the  universe,  of  God,  of  man,  of  duty,  of 
destiny.  All  of  them  are  by  implication  in 
every  possible  sermon  that  a  man  can  preach. 
If  you  do  not  think  about  them  clearly,  and 
so  comprehend  the  fact,  that  does  not  destroy 
the  fact. 

Theology,  then,  is  to  abide.  We  must,  if 
we  think  at  all,  have  certain  theories.  This 
is  not  confined  to  our  religious  life.  The 
modern  world  has  Its  new  astronomy,  its  new 
geology,  its  new  chemistry.  The  old  theories 
have  passed  away ;  but  the  new  theories  have 
come.  These  theories  seem  to  be  accurate  at 
the  present  time.  They  may  not  be  perman- 
ent, possibly  they  will  be  outgrown  by  and 
by ;  but  if  so,  it  will  mean  simply  that  we 
have  newer  knowledo-e  and  the  old  theories 
are  discredited  in  the  light  of  it. 

So,  while  theologies  pass,  while  religions 
pass,  in  the  old  meaning  of  the  term,  theology 
must  abide,  just  as  religion  must  abide. 

Let  us  now  trace  the  growth  and  changes 
of   one  dogma   as   illustrating   this   fact   and 


Theologies  and  Theology  45 

showing  its  beauty  and  its  beneficence.  Take 
the  nature  and  the  service  of  Jesus  in  the 
history  of  the  world.  "What  think  ye  of 
the  Christ?"     For  hundreds  of  years  in  the  f 

early  Church  it  was  believed  that  the  suf- 
fering and  death  of  Christ  was  a  price  paid 
to  the  devil  for  the  redemption  of  the  race. 
In  other  words  it  was  believed  that  man  by 
his  sin  had  voluntarily  put  himself  into  the 
hands  of  Satan ;  that  he  belonged  to  him, 
as  a  citizen  of  Germany  belongs  to  the  empire. 
This  right  of  Satan  over  the  human  race 
even  God  recoofnised.  So,  when  God  under- 
took  the  work  of  delivering  man  from  him,  He 
paid  him  a  price  for  the  deliverance, — paid  the 
sufferinof  and  the  death  of  the  Christ.  And 
this  idea  was  carried  so  far — and  this  is  a 
good  illustration  of  the  point  I  made  a  little 
while  ago  as  to  the  moral  growth  of  the  world 
— that  they  even  taught  that  God  conde- 
scended to  cheat  the  devil  in  the  bargain. 
The  devil  did  not  know  that  the  Christ  was 
divine,  and  that,  therefore,  he  could  not  keep 
him  permanently.  So  he  proposed  to  let  men 
go  on  condition  of  having  the  Christ  delivered 
into  his  hands.  God  agreed  to  the  terms  and 
the  bargain  was  made.  But  the  Christ,  being 
divine,  escaped,  and  so  the  devil  was  cheated 


46  Theologies  and  Theology- 

out  of  both  his  prisoners  and  the  price  paid 
for  their  ransom. 

This  was  taught  as  serious  theology  for 
hundreds  of  years.  It  then  came  to  be  be- 
lieved and  taught  that  Jesus  paid  the  penalty 
for  human  sin  ;  that  he  expiated  the  divine 
wrath.  It  was  held  that  his  suffering  and 
death  was  a  governmental  device ;  that  God 
could  not  maintain  the  moral  government 
of  the  universe  unless  some  one  was  punished, 
and  so  Jesus  volunteered  to  bear  the  penalty. 

When  I  was  a  young  man,  the  newer  theory, 
that  of  Dr.  Horace  Bushnell  of  Hartford, 
which  was  called  the  "  Moral  Theory,"  was 
very  much  talked  about  and  considered.  It 
is  almost  universally  held  now  by  the  liberal 
thinkers  of  the  older  churches.  According  to 
this  the  suffering  and  death  of  Jesus  do  not 
produce  a  changed  feeling  of  God  towards 
men  at  all.  They  are  supposed  only  to  influ- 
ence men,  to  make  them  see  the  evil  of  sin 
and  the  love  of  God,  and  so  lead  them  to  vol- 
untary renunciation  of  sin  and  reconciliation 
with  God. 

Now  all  these  theories  have  been  concerned 
only  with  the  nature  of  the  work  of  Christ ; 
but  through  all  the  ages,  there  have  been  the 
tender-hearted,  the  true,  the  mystics,  loving, 


Theologies  and  Theology  47 

simple    souls,    who    have    not^heen    trouhled 

about  these  theories.     They  have  simply  loved 

the  Nazarene,  have  simply  been  changed  and 

elevated  and  inspired  and  lifted  by  the  life  of  .f 

Jesus.     They  have  had  their  hearts  softened 

by  his  teaching  and  learned  where  to  set  their 

steps.     They  have  loved  him,  have  followed 

him,  have  delighted  in  him.     They  have  been 

transformed  and  wrouo^ht  over  into  the  like- 

ness  of  his  life  through  this  love,  without  any 

recrard  to  the  theologies. 

The  theologies  about  him  pass  away  ;  but 
Jesus  remains  to-day  the  supreme  figure  in 
human  history,  the  light  of  the  Father  shining 
in  his  face,  the  tenderness  of  the  Father  in 
the  words  that  fall  from  his  lips,  the  clasp 
of  human  friendship  and  brotherhood  and 
divine  encouragement  in  his  hands.  He  re- 
mains our  guide,  our  inspiration,  our  helper, 
our  comfort.  But,  if  we  stop  to  think  about 
it,  we  must  frame  a  theory.  We  reject  the 
old  theories  as  morally  wrong,  as  spiritually 
defective ;  but  the  moment  we  think  about 
him,  we  must  have  a  theory  to-day  ;  so  theo- 
logy as  well  as  religion  abides.  So  long  as 
man  feels  and  loves,  he  will  be  religious ;  so 
long  as  he  thinks,  he  will  be  theological. 
But  the  religrions  will  erow  as  he  advances : 


48  Theologies  and  Theology 

and  as  he  sloughs  off  one  after  another  the 
theological  theories  of  the  past  that  have 
proved  inadequate,  he  can  only  think  out  for 
himself  some  finer  and  better  theory  still. 
But  all  his  knowledge,  until  he  becomes  infin- 
ite, will  be  in  part ;  and,  as  he  nears  more 
and  more  the  perfect,  that  which  is  in  part 
shall  progressively  be  done  away. 


y 


III 


THE    UNIVERSE 


EVERY  religion  has  started  in  a  cosmology  ; 
that  is,  the  thought  side,  the  theoretical 
side,  of  every  religion  is  always  bound  up 
with  a  theory  of  things, — the  nature,  the  origin 
of  the  world.  It  is  no  accident,  therefore, 
that  the  first  word  in  the  Bible  is  a  scien- 
tific word, — as  scientific  as  the  knowledge  of 
that  time  would  allow.  "  In  the  beginning 
the  Elohim  created  the  heavens  and  the 
earth." 

It  would  be  interesting  to  note  the  theories 
of  things  that  have  been  held  by  different 
peoples  in  different  parts  of  the  world ;  but 
for  our  present  purpose  we  will  go  no  farther 
afield  than  to  trace  the  growth  of  these  theo- 
ries, from  the  beginning  in  Hebrew  thought, 
through  Christian  speculation,  up  to  the  pre- 
sent time.  Trace  the  growth,  do  I  say  ? 
What  I  really  mean  is  that  we  are  to  note  one 
or  two  phases  of  thought  on  this  subject,  so 

4  49 


50  The  Universe 

that  we  can   see   the   immense  advance  that 
has  been  made. 

To  the  writer  of  Genesis  the  universe  was 
a  very  small  affair.  It  was  a  sort  of  two-story 
structure  at  first.  There  was  the  flat  earth, 
either  anchored  in  the  midst  of  the  surround- 
ing ocean  or  fixed  in  some  way  in  its  place. 
It  was  roofed  over  by  a  firmament  as  solid  as 
if  beaten  out  by  the  smith  from  some  mal- 
leable metal.  In  this  firmament  were  windows 
for  the  rains  to  come  through, — the  waters 
that  were  stored  above  the  firmament, — and  to 
it  were  attached  the  sun,  the  moon,  and  the 
stars,  to  eive  lie^t  to  the  inhabitants  of  the 
earth.  Above  this  firmament  was  the  abode 
of  God  and  His  angels.  This  was  the  first 
thought  of  the  universe. 

As  Hebrew  imagination  and  experience 
Qfrew,  there  at  last  came  to  be  believed  in  a 
sort  of  basement, — shall  I  call  it? — making  it, 
instead  of  a  two-story,  a  three-story  structure. 
Beneath  the  surface  of  the  earth  there  was  an 
underground  world,  the  abode  of  the  spirits 
of  the  dead.  This  may  stand  as  fairly  repre- 
sentnig  the  belief  in  the  universe  on  the  part 
of  the  Hebrews  throughout  almost  their  entire 
history  as  a  nation. 

It   was    a   modification    of   this  which   was 


The  Universe  51 

held  in  the  time  of  Jesus.  In  the  early  half 
of  the  second  century  there  lived  in  Alexandria 
a  famous  mathematician  and  astronomer  by 
the  name  of  Ptolemy,  who  gave  his  name  to 
what  has  come  to  be  called  the  Ptolemaic 
theory  of  the  universe.  This  held  the  minds 
of  men  until  sometime  in  the  fifteenth  century. 
This  Ptolemaic  theory  is  the  one  that  furn- 
ishes the  framework  of  Dante's  great  poem 
and  of  Milton's  epic.  In  this — to  be  brief — 
the  earth  was  at  the  centre ;  and  this  was  sur- 
rounded by  and  enclosed  in  a  series  of  concent- 
ric crystal,  transparent  spheres, — to  compare 
large  things  with  small,  very  much  like  a  nest 
of  orlass  (globes  inside  each  other.  To  the 
first  of  these,  and  therefore  the  smallest,  was 
attached  the  moon  ;  to  the  next  the  sun,  and 
to  the  rest  In  their  order  the  then  known 
planets.  Outside  of  these  was  one  to  the  sur- 
face of  which  were  attached  all  the  fixed  stars. 
Beyond  this  was  still  another,  close  to  heaven 
itself,  and  which  was  supposed  in  some  mys- 
terious way  to  be  moved  by  divine  power, 
and  in  its  motion  to  carry  around  with  It  all 
the  others. 

In  this  way  the  movements  of  the  heavenly 
bodies  were  explained  in  the  Ptolemaic  system  ; 
and  these  spheres  are  the  ones  we  speak  and 


52  The  Universe 

sing  of  still,  though  most  of  us  have  forgotten 
what  we  mean  when  we  talk  about  the  "  music 
of  the  spheres  "  or  when  we  refer  to  a  star  as 
"  starting  from  its  sphere."  These  were  real, 
substantial  things  in  this  Ptolemaic  theory, 
carrying  the  heavenly  bodies  around  with 
them  in  their  circling  motions. 

Those  who  believed  in  this  theory  had  a 
good  deal  of  difficulty  as  time  went  on  in  ex- 
plaining astronomical  facts  ;  and  they  had  to 
invent  a  great  many  additions  to  and  modifi- 
cations of  their  theory,  because  one  after 
another  it  was  noticed  that  the  heavenly 
bodies  did  not  behave  as  they  ought,  if  this 
theory  were  true  ;  until  at  last  the  difficulties 
grew  so  great  that  Prince  Alphonso  of  Castile, 
an  amateur  astronomer  and  famous  mathema- 
tician, said  that  if  he  had  been  present  at  the 
creation,  he  could  have  suggested  a  good 
many  valuable  improvements  on  the  theory. , 
The  inconsistencies  were  so  great  that  it  was 
very  difficult  for  a  scholarly  man  any  longer 
to  accept  the  old  ideas. 

About  the  time  that  Columbus  was  discover- 
ing a  new  continent,  Copernicus  was  discover- 
ing a  new  universe.  He  was  a  devout  Catholic. 
He  would  not,  if  he  could  help  it,  affront  or 
disturb    the    authorities    of   his    Church ;  and 


The  Universe  53 

yet  his  knowledoe  of  the  universe  grew  to  be 
such  that  he  felt  he  must  write  it  down  in  a 
book.  Governed  by  considerations  regarding 
his  own  safety,  undoubtedly,  his  book  was 
published — though  I  think  it  was  dedicated  to 
the  pope — as  a  tentative  theory,  and  during 
the  very  last  year  of  his  life.  The  first  copy 
which  the  author  ever  saw  was  brought  to 
him  as  he  lay  on  his  sick-bed,  from  which 
he  never  rose  asfain.  Had  he  lived  he  would 
undoubtedly  have  been  persecuted  for  his 
teaching,  as  the  book  was  placed  on  the  In- 
dex, and  all  good  Catholics  were  forbidden 
to  read  it. 

But  here  was  the  beginning  of  what  is  now 
the  universally  accepted  theory  of  the  universe. 
One  after  another  facis  began  to  round  out 
this  theory.  Galileo,  Kepler,  Newton,  have 
added  to  our  knowledge  in  these  directions, 
until  at  last  we  are  in  the  midst  of  this  tre- 
mendous fact  that  surrounds  us  on  every 
hand.  Science,  dreaded  always  by  the  Church, 
fought  at  every  step  by  theology,  by  the  ec- 
clesiastics, the  churchly  authorities, — science 
at  last  has  done  for  us  what  the  Church  was 
never  able  to  do.  It  has  given  us  a  universe 
fit  to  be  the  garment,  the  home,  the  phenom- 
enal manifestation  of  the  infinite  God. 


54  The  Universe 

We  are  all  familiar  with  the  facts  that  make 
this  universe  so  overwhelming  to  us  ;  and  yet, 
to  freshen  your  thought,  perhaps  I  may  be 
pardoned  if  I  suggest  one  or  two  illustrations 
to  help  us  to  feel  its  vastness. 

We  say  glibly,  "  This  earth  is  twenty-five 
thousand  miles  in  circumference "  ;  and  we 
have  learned  to  adjust  ourselves  to  the 
thought  that  I  used  to  repeat  as  a  little  coup- 
let in  my  child's  geography, — 

"  This  world  is  round,  wise  men  declare, 
And  hung  on  nothing  in  the  air." 

These  are  familiar  facts  to  us.  But  we  do 
not  think  of  them  enough  to  appreciate  how 
tremendous  they  are.  We  say  the  moon  is 
two  hundred  thousand » miles  away.  Do  we 
stop  to  appreciate  that,  as  we  rejoice  in  the 
beauty  of  it  on  some  summer  night?  How 
large  is  the  sun  ?  Large  enough  so  that,  if  it 
were  a  hollow  sphere  with  the  earth  at  its 
centre,  the- moon,  two  hundred  thousand  miles 
away,  would  have  free  room  to  swing  in  her 
orbit  inside  the  sun. 

To  hint  another  illustration  :  if  all  the  plan- 
ets, all  the  jnoons,  all  the  comets,  asteroids, 
all  the  bodies  that  make  up  this  solar  system 
of  ours,  except  the  sun,  were  fused  into  one 


The  Universe  55 


>t 


globe,  and  that  were  hurled  against  the  face 
of  the  sun,  it  would  be  so  small  a  spot  that  it 
would  hardly  show,  being  less  than  three  per 
cent,  of  the  sun  itself  in  bulk.  ,f 

This  sun,  we  say,  is  between  ninety-two 
and  ninety-three  millions  of  miles  away ;  and 
the  light,  which  seems  to  cross  the  space  be- 
tween the  moon  and  the  earth  instantane- 
ously, takes  a  little  over  eight  minutes  to 
reach  us  from  the  sun.  But  this  same 
light,  travelling  with  this  incredible  velocity, 
—or  inconceivable,  shall  I  say  ? — has  to  journey 
for  three  years  and  a  half  before  it  reaches 
our  next-door  neighbour  beyond  our  little 
solar  system.  The  nearest  body  to  our  little 
group  is  so  far  away  that  it  takes  light  about 
three  years  and  a  half  to  reach  us.  If  I  re- 
member accurately,  the  next  friend  beyond 
that  is  about  seven  years  away,  as  light  travels. 
When  I  was  a  boy,  and  looked  up  to  the 
skies,  I  wondered  that  there  were  not  frequent 
collisions  there,  the  blue  seemed  so  crowded  ; 
but  when  we  remember  the  inconceivable  dis- 
tances, we  wonder,  rather,  that  they  can  have 
any  influence  whatever  over  each  other.  But 
when  we  have  reached  these,  our  next-door 
neighbours,  we  are  only  standing  on  the 
threshold  of   star-liorhted  avenues  that   reach 


56  The  Universe 

on  and  on  and  on  until  imagination  faints, 
though  we  know  that  we  have  only  begun  an 
endless  journey. 

The  universe,  then,  overwhelms  us  by  its 
vastness,  as  we  try  to  think  of  it ;  and  if  we 
suppose  that  God  is  still  beyond  the  stars,  as 
they  used  to  think  Him  to  be,  why,  then.  He  is 
put  at  almost  an  infinite  remove  from  us. 
And  if  we  think  that  heaven  is  away  beyond 
these  luminous  orbs,  then  the  souls  of  our 
friends  that  have  left  us  have  started  on  an 
infinite  journey. 

There  are  those  who  tell  us  that  all  the 
facts  of  this  universe  can  be  accounted  for 
simply  by  supposing  the  existence  of  matter 
and  force,  without  any  intelligence  or  any 
life  except  that  which  is  the  product  of  matter 
and  force,  thrown  up  as  the  waves  of  the 
sea  are  thrown  up  for  a  little  while  into 
the  light  and  the  air,  to  go  back  and  be  re-, 
absorbed  once  more. 

Let  us  .contemplate  this  universe,  then,  for 
a  few  moments,  and  see  in  the  light  of  the 
best  science  of  the  modern  world  what  we  are 
to  think  about  it.  There  is  a  large  body  of 
people  whojancy  themselves  thinkers  at  the 
present  time  who  have  made  the  word  "  meta- 
physics "  a  weariness  to  all  those  who    try  to 


The  Universe  57 

keep  themselves  level-headed  and  sane.  They 
tell  us  that  our  senses  misreport  all  the  facts, 
that  we  cannot  know  anything  by  means  of 
our  senses,  that  matter  is  an  illusion,  not  real 
at  all,  and  that  the  only  thing  that  is  real  is 
mind. 

There  are  certain  apparent  facts  which  seem 
to  justify  this  shallow  conclusion.  I  look  at 
the  sun  and  the  moon  ;  and  they  seem  very 
small  to  me  and  not  very  far  away,  so  that  it 
is  easy  for  one  to  say  that  his  sight  has  de- 
luded him.  But  except  for  my  sight  I  should 
not  know  that  there  exists  any  sun  or  moon 
at  all,  either  near  or  far.  We  talk  about  the 
sun's  rising  and  setting.  It  appears  to  rise 
and  set,  but  we  have  found  out  that  this  is  not 
true.  The  sun  is  substantially  still,  so  far  as 
this  system  of  ours  is  concerned,  though  we 
believe  it  to  be  itself  travelling  with  unspeak- 
able velocity  around  some  more  distant  sun. 
We  look  at  a  flower,  at  a  rose,  and  we  talk 
about  the  beautiful  colour.  We  have  learned 
that  the  colour  is  not  in  the  rose.  We  listen 
to  the  sound  of  the  waves  on  the  sea-shore. 
We  have  learned  that  apart  from  our  ears  and 
our  consciousness  there  is  no  sound  on  the 
sea-shore.  We  have  learned  that  all  these  phe- 
nomenal manifestations,  light,  and  heat,  and 


58  The  Universe 

electricity,  and  magnetism,  and  colour,  and 
sound,  are  modes  of  motion,  touching  us,  our 
senses,  and  then  transformed  in  our  conscious- 
ness in  some  at  present  unknown  way  into 
what  they  seem  to  us  to  be. 

Is  the  universe  therefore  illusion?  Nay, 
but  there  is  an  outside  reality  there,  an  eternal 
reality  which  appeals  to  us,  and  becomes  these 
things  in  our  consciousness.  We  know  now 
that,  whether  man  is  Immortal  or  not,  what 
we  call  matter  is.  We  can  demonstrate  over 
and  over  again  that  both  force  and  matter  are 
indestructible.  What  they  are  in  themselves 
is  another  problem ;  and  I  venture  to  say  that 
it  is  a  problem  which  does  not  concern  us, 
except  as  a  matter  of  intellectual  curiosity. 

So  far  as  we  can  think,  nothing  is  anything 
"  in  itself."  Everything  is  what  it  is  as  related 
to  the  perceiving  intelligence.  Sound,  light, 
colour, — all  these  things  are  what  they  are  to 
us  who  perceive  and  use  them.  What  they 
might  conceivably  be  to  some  other  kind  of 
being  may  be  a  matter  of  interest ;  but  it  is 
of  no  practical  importance  to  us.  What  they 
are  to  us,  being  what  we  are,  is  that  which 
concerns  us,^and  is  the  only  thing  which  we 
need  to  know. 

This    universe,  then,  that  surrounds  us  on 


The  Universe  59 

every  hand  is  a  reality  :  it  is  an  indestructible 
and  eternal  reality ;  and  it  is  to  us  all  these 
fair  and  beautiful  thino^s  translated  into  terms 
of  our  consciousness  and  become  ministers 
to  our  use  and  to  our  joy. 

Now,  if  we  turn  in  another  direction,  it  is 
interestincr  for  us  to  try  to  find  out  what  this 
thincr  that  we  call  "matter"  is.  For  we  must 
outgrow  the  childishness  of  supposing  that  we 
know  a  thing  merely  because  we  have  named 
and  labelled  it.  What  is  this  which  we  call 
"matter"  ? 

The  man  who  knows  ver)^  little,  indeed,  is 
the  one  who  thinks,  perhaps,  that  he  knows 
the  most  on  this  subject.  Matter  is  something 
hard  ;  it  is  something  solid  ;  it  is  something 
he  can  spurn  with  his  foot  or  kick  with  his 
boot,  —  something  very  substantial.  So  he 
thinks.  But  the  most  substantial  thine  that 
we  can  find  we  can  turn  into  invisible  vapor ; 
and,  if  we  leave  it  free,  it  disappears  beyond 
the  reach  of  any  of  our  senses.  What  is  this 
hard  and  solid  thing,  then,  that  we  call  matter  ? 

We  have  learned,  for  example,  that  there  is 
no  such  thing  as  a  solid  bit  of  matter,  mean- 
ing by  that  that  the  particles  are  in  contact 
with  each  other.     The  most  solid  thinor  in  the 

o 

\vorld  can  be   compressed    until  it  is   smaller 


6o  The  Universe 

than  It  was.  That  means  that  the  particles 
do  not  really  touch  each  other :  they  can  be 
pressed  nearer  and  nearer  together.  For  the 
particles,  even  of  a  bit  of  marble,  are  not  in 
contact  and  they  are  not  still.  They  are  in  a 
perpetual  dance,  as  much  as  are  the  bodies 
in  the  sky  over  our  heads.  They  have  their 
own  marvellous  orbit ;  and  the  "  solid  "  thing 
is  all  athrill  with  motion. 

They  used  to  talk  about  a  something  called 
"dead  matter"  which  the  Creator  originally 
impressed  with  certain  qualities.  He  made 
one  substance  hard  and  another  soft,  one  red 
and  another  green,  one  metallic  and  another 
of  a  woody  fibre.  He  impressed  these  quali- 
ties on  these  hard  substances,  they  said  ;  but 
we  go  in  pursuit  of  this  hard  matter,  and  It 
is  Impossible  for  us  to  discover  it  anywhere. 
There  used  to  be,  and  there  is  now,  in  the 
theories  of  chemistry  for  practical  purposes, 
something,  called  an  "  atom,"  an  atom  sup- 
posed to  be  the  ultimate  hard  substance 
through  a  combination  of  which  all  other  sub- 
stances  were  made.  But,  when  we  thought 
about  an  atom  as  a  real  substance,  a  real  solid 
bit  of  something  that  we  could  deal  with 
through  our  senses,  we  were  plunged  into  a 
sea   of   absurdities.     Then   we    pursued    this 


The  Universe  6i 

atom  with  the  microscope,  with  every  instru- 
ment of  research  that  we  could  discover,  until 
we  found  at  last  that  we  were  in  the  presence 
of  what  Faraday  called  a  "  point  of  force," 
or  what  others  have  named  *'  a  vibratory  thrill," 
or  others  still  "a  vortex  in  the  ether." 

We  hunt  for  matter,  then,  as  some  solid, 
hard  thing ;  and  we  cannot  find  it.  We  do 
find,  however,  everywhere,  this  infinite,  tire- 
less movement  and  life.  We  find  that  the 
universe  is  athrill  from  the  lowest  depths  that 
the  microscope  can  discover  to  the  farthest 
range  of  the  telescope  over  our  heads, — every- 
thing, everywhere,  apparently  alive.  And 
these  little  particles  of  matter,  so  far  as  they 
can  be  discovered,  have  behaved  in  such  a 
strange  way  that  the  materialistic  philosophers 
themselves  have  been  compelled  to  reconstruct 
their  theories  about  them.  Clifford,  one  of 
the  most  brilliant  materialists  that  England 
has  produced  during  the  last  fifty  years, — it 
is  a  pity  that  he  died  so  young, — used  to  tell 
us  about  a  little  "mind-stuff"  in  every  particle 
of  matter.  He  could  not  account  for  the  be- 
haviour of  matter  in  any  other  way.  Haeckel, 
the  German  scientist,  talks  about  "  atom 
souls."  He  cannot  account  for  the  action  of 
atoms  in    crystals,   in  growing  plants,  and  in 


62  The  Universe 

man  without  supposing  that  they  have  con- 
nected with  them  soul  or  mind  substance,  out 
of  which  uhimately  our  own  souls  are  built. 

So  the  materialists  themselves  have  had 
to  give  up  what  is  called  the  materialistic 
theory  of  things, — the  idea  that  the  universe 
is  made  out  of  any  substance  called  dead  mat- 
ter that  has  been  wrought  upon  from  the  out- 
side by  a  creative  power,  and  that  it  has  had 
these  forces  and  these  qualities  impressed 
upon  it  by  some  divine  artificer. 

We  find,  then,  so  far  as  we  can  trace  it, 
that  this  universe  is  a  thrill  with  such  mysteri- 
ous and  subtle  forces  that  we  are  beginning 
to  wonder  if  it  is  not  a  living  creature.  Take 
such  a  fact  as  wireless  telegraphy,  and  a 
thousand  others  that  are  given  us  by  modern 
science,  and  which  are  becoming  so  familiar 
to  us  that  we  are  apt  to  overlook  the  marvel 
and  significance  of  it  all. 

Then  consider  thought-transference.  We 
have  not  yet  mastered  the  law  of  it,  we  cannot 
yet  use  this  power  at  will ;  but  it  is  demon- 
strated beyond  all  rational  question  that  minds 
can  communicate  without  any  regard  to  dis- 
tance, and  practically  without  any  regard  to 
time,  clear  round  the  world.  I  know  cases  of 
this    thought-transference    from    the    Indian 


The  Universe  63 

Ocean  to  the  Atlantic.  I  know  a  case  recently 
from  Manila  to  New  York.'  Thousands  of 
them  have  been  demonstrated  to  be  true. 
The  world  is  a  whispering-gallery  ;  and  it  is 
all  alive  in  response  to  our  thoughts,  our  feel- 
ings, our  hopes,  our  fears,  our  human  activities. 
What  kind  of  strange  thing,  then,  is  this 
universe?  If"*'I  remember  rightly,  Sweden- 
borg  told  us  that  the  universe  was  in  the  form 
of  a  man.  What  if  we  should  come  to  the 
conclusion  at  last  that  the  universe  is  a  livingr 
organism  instead  of  a  mechanism  ? — that  it 
is  a  living  being,  thrilling  with  life  in  every 
particle  ?  We  are  being  driven,  scientifically 
driven,  to  that  conclusion.  Because  certain 
things,  different  parts  of  the  universe,  are  out- 
side of  our  consciousness,  does  not  prove  that 
they  are  outside  of  some  consciousness.  To 
take  an  illustration  suggested  by  a  book  of 
Flammarion's  (in  English  entitled  The  U71- 
knowfi)  ;  We  know  that  these  bodies  of  ours  are 
full  of  thousands,  perhaps  millions,  of  microbes, 
and  they  are  not  enemies  of  ours,  the  most  of 
them  :  in  health  they  are  our  friends.  But 
suppose  one  of  these  microbes  given  con- 
scious power  of  thought  similar  to  our  own  ; 
and,  as  he  sailed  down  the  Amazon  or  Missis- 
sippi,   to    him,    of    one    of    our   veins,    or   as 


64  The  Universe 

he  bored  or  tunnelled  his  way  through  the 
immense  rocky  strata  of  one  of  our  bones, 
or  as  he  watched  some  part  of  our  heart,  not 
conscious  of  it  as  an  organ  by  itself  and  fulfil- 
ling its  own  peculiar  function, — suppose  he 
should  try  to  speculate  as  to  a  consciousness 
that  could  give  life  and  the  sense  of  personal 
identity  to  this  structure,  as  large  and  incom- 
prehensible to  him  as  the  universe  itself  is 
to  us. 

I  think  it  is  Martineau  who  said  that,  for 
all  any  scientific  person  knew  to  the  contrary, 
the  dance  of  the  planetary  systems  over  our 
heads  migfht  be  the  dance  of  the  brain  mole- 
cules  of  some  cosmic  consciousness.  These 
thoughts  overwhelm  us,  and  seem  incredible 
at  first.  But  there  is  nothing  incredible  about 
them.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  fact ;  and, 
as  already  said,  we  are  being  driven  more  and 
more  to  the  belief  that  this  universe  is  a  liv- 
ing organism.  And  I  incline  strongly  to  the 
belief  tha.t  God  is  the  intellect,  the  heart, 
the  soul  of  it,  as  I  am  the  intellect,  the  heart, 
the  soul  of  this  organism  called  my  body. 

And,  if  we  may  think  of  it  in  this  way,  then 
God  is  not  away  off  in  any  heaven.  He  is 
everywhere;  and  He  is  all  everywhere  at  any 
instant  of  time,  as  I  am  all,  for  any  practical 


The  Universe  65 

purpose,  in  ever}'  part  of  my  body  at  any  par- 
ticular moment  of  time. 

This  is  the  conception  of  the  universe  that 
we  are  coming  more  and  more  in  some  form 
to  hold.  The  universe  is  a  living  being,  and 
that  which  is  the  life  of  that  universe  is  close 
by  us ;  and  we  are  a  part  of  this  infinite  life. 

We  need  here  to  guard  ourselves  against 
one  serious  error.  Because  of  what  has  been 
said,  we  are  not  to  confuse  or  confound  the 
distinction  between  mind  and  matter.  It  is 
common  just  now  for  certain  people,  who 
think  they  are  thinkers,  to  say  "  all  is  mind." 
But  what  we  call  matter — whatever  its  ulti- 
mate origin  may  be — is  a  distinct  and  definite 
fact,  governed  in  accordance  with  its  own  laws, 
as  ascertained  by  the  senses  and  experience 
of  man.  This  material  order,  of  which  our 
bodies  are  a  part,  is  as  divine  and  holy  as  the 
mental  or  spiritual  order.  To  deny  it  or  dis- 
regard it  is  not  piety  but  the  contrary.  For 
one  is  of  God  as  truly  as  is  the  other.  It  is 
not  spirituality,  but  only  mental  confusion 
which  blurs  this  distinction. 

It  is  worth  while  to  note  one  or  two  points 
briefly  as  indicating  the  moral  and  spiritual 
significance  of  this  view  of  the  universe. 

The  universe  is  an  intelligent  being,  which- 


66  The  Universe 

ever  way  we  turn.  Wherever  we  pursue  our 
investigations,  we  find  an  intelHgible  order, 
perfect  of  its  kind.  That  which  matches  our 
intelHgence,  and  that  which  is  intelHgible,  we 
can  only  interpret  as  the  manifestation  of 
intelligence.  I  believe,  then,  that  this  uni- 
verse is  a  living  organism,  and  that  it  is  intel- 
ligible and  intelligent  from  circumference  to 
centre. 

Not  only  that.  In  the  second  place  it  is 
beneficent.  In  spite  of  all  the  evils,  in  spite 
of  all  the  sufferings,  the  pains,  and  the  sorrow, 
the  universe  is  a  beneficent  organism.  In  the 
nature  of  things,  if  we  stop  and  think  of  it 
a  moment,  it  cannot  be  anything  else.  Life 
and  joy  are  the  result  always  of  keeping  the 
laws  of  this  universe.  Pain,  sorrow,  what  we 
call  evil,  premature  death, — these  are  always 
the  result  of  law-breaking.  The  universe  is 
in  favour  of  the  keeping  of  its  own  laws.  It 
is  in  favour  of  life,  of  joy,  of  good,  which  are 
the  result,  of  the  keeping  of  these  laws.  It 
seems  to  me  that  this  is  demonstrable  truth. 

Then  the  universe  is  the  embodiment  of 
a  purpose.  We  can  trace  an  intelligent  ad- 
vance, from^  the  first  beginning  of  our  inves- 
tigation up  the  ages,  until  to-day  ;  and  we  can 
see  that  the  universe  is  still  on  the  march, — 


The  Universe  67 

it  is  not  through.  To  quote  again,  words 
already  quoted  till  they  are  trite,  it  is  reaching 
toward  some 

**  far-off  divine  event," 

as  Tennyson  has  sung. 

We  cannot  escape  the  conclusion  that  the 
universe  is  moving  with  a  purpose  towards  an 
outcome :  living,  intelligent,  beneficent,  ad- 
vancing, progressing.  Such  is  our  modern 
thought  of  this  marvellous  universe  of  which 
we  are  a  part. 

Now  ethics  in  a  universe  like  this,  the  laws 
of  right  and  wrong,  cannot  be  something 
imported  from  outside,  cannot  be  external 
legislation,  cannot  be  arbitrary  enactments, 
with  arbitrary  rewards  and  punishments  at- 
tached. Riorht  and  wrono;  are  in  the  nature 
of  things.  Law-keeping  is  right, — that  is,  liv- 
ing in  accord  with  this  infinite  and  eternal  life  ; 
and  law-breaking  is  wrong,  living  out  of  ac- 
cord with  this  eternal  and  beneficent  life. 

And  religion  cannot  be  something  imported 
from  without.  It  cannot  be  a  thinof  of  cere- 
monies  or  creeds.  I  say  nothing  against 
ceremonies.  If  ceremonies  express  a  real  feel- 
ing or  help  cultivate  a  real  feeling,  well  and 
good.     They  may  be  of  service.     I  say  nothing 


^ 


68  The  Universe 

against  creeds.  If  a  man  believe  rightly,  it 
will  help  him  to  act  rightly.  For  this  reason, 
and  to  this  extent,  his  creed  is  important. 
But  the  idea  of  a  creed,  or  believing  such  and 
such  a  thing,  as  a  vital  matter  in  the  sense 
that  somebody  is  going  to  be  offended  if 
we  do  not, — that  is  all  wrong.  These  things 
are  not  important  in  that  sense. 

The  one  thing  that  is  essential  and  vital 
in  religion  is  life, — living  in  accord  with  the 
infinite  life  of  the  Infinite  Power  manifested 
in  the  universe.  Whatever  helps  that  life 
helps  our  religious  culture  and  development. 
Whatever  stands  in  the  way  of  these  stands 
in  the  way  of  our  religious  life.  But  the  life 
Itself — the  feeling,  the  love,  the  consecration, 
the  service — these  are  the  rells^Ion. 


IV 

^  MAN 

IN  the  early  part  of  the  sixth  century  before 
Christ  there  lived  in  Sparta  a  man  by  the 
name  of  Chilon.  He  was  one  of  the  reputed 
Seven  Sages  of  Greece ;  and  to  him  is  attrib- 
uted one  of  the  most  famous  sayings  of  the 
world, — "  Know  thyself."  He  taught  that  the 
most  important  object  of  human  knowledge 
was  human  nature. 

And,  as  we  think  of  it,  we  are  compelled 
to  recognise  that  our  theories  and  systems 
of  religion  depend  very  largely  upon  our  con- 
ception of  the  origin  and  nature  of  man.  Our 
ethical  schemes  are  determined  by  what  we 
think  about  ourselves.  The  origin  of  man 
is  intimately,  inextricably  associated  with  our 
thought  as  to  the  kind  of  being  he  is  ;  and 
dependent  on  this  thought — as  to  the  kind  of 
being  he  is — are  our  dreams  of  his  destiny, 
both  in  this  world  and  any  possible  world  in 
the  future.     It  ought   to  be,  then,  the   most 

69 


70  Man 

interesting,  as  it  is  the  most  important,  thing 
for  us  to  study, — the  origin  and  nature  of  man. 

From  the  beginning  of  the  world  until  within 
the  last  half-century,  substantially  the  same 
ideas  have  been  held  concerning  human  ori- 
gins. In  other  words,  all  religions,  all  races, 
have  believed  that  man  was,  at  some  time  in 
the  history  of  the  past,  made,— made  by  a 
being  working  on  material  from  without,  as 
a  sculptor  might  fashion  and  shape  his  clay. 
You  are  familiar  with  the  story  which  lies  at 
the  foundation  of  our  religion,  and  which  I 
need  to  note  merely  for  the  sake  of  refreshing 
your  memory  with  what   you    already  know. 

The  early  chapters  of  Genesis,  though  they 
were  not  put  into  their  present  form  until  late 
in  the  history  of  the  Hebrew  people,  tell  us 
that  God  created  man  in  His  own  imao^e — that 
He  took  the  dust  of  the  earth  and  shaped  the 
human  body.  Then  He  breathed  into  the- 
nostrils  the  breath  of  life,  and  this  body  be- 
came a  living  creature.  The  use  of  the  word 
"soul"  there  does  not  determine  anything  as 
to  what  we  mean  when  we  discuss  the  ques- 
tion of  the  nature  of  the  soul  and  its  possible 
immortality-:  it  means  simply  that  this  man, 
created  out  of  the  dust,  became  alive  when 
God  breathed  into  his  nostrils. 


Man  71 

Then  it  is  said  that  God  f9rined  a  garden 
eastward  in  Eden,  and  in  it  planted  all  trees 
that  were  goodly  to  look  at  and  good  for  food. 
And  He  placed  the  man  and  the  woman— 
whom  He  created  afterward — as  the  keepers 
of  this  garden,  forbidding  only  one  thing, — 
that  they  should  taste  of  the  fruit  of  one  par- 
ticular tree.  They  disobeyed  this  explicit 
order  after  they  were  tempted  by  the  serpent, 
who  in  later  time  came  to  be  regarded  as  the 
same  as  the  devil.  And,  as  the  result  of  this 
disobedience,  they  were  cast  out  of  the  gar- 
den. And  all  the  evils  that  have  been  known 
from  the  beginning  of  creation  until  now  have 
followed  that  act  of  disobedience  and  that 
expulsion. 

Moral  evil  came,  so  that  man  has  been  re- 
garded in  all  the  great  theologies  of  Christen- 
dom as  incapable  of  any  moral  good.  This 
is  the  familiar  doctrine  of  total  depravity  ;  and 
it  is  a  perfectly  logical  doctrine.  It  means 
simply  that  man  is  a  rebel  against  his  rightful 
Ruler ;  and,  so  long  as  he  continues  in  this 
attitude  of  rebellion,  he  cannot  do  any  good 
thing, — anything  which  his  Ruler  will  accept 
as  good.  This  rebellious  attitude  vitiates  all 
his  actions  and  his  nature, — a  perfectly  logical 
outcome. 


72  Man 

As  the  result  of  this,  sin,  pain,  and  sorrow 
came  into  the  world.  And,  finally,  man  was 
doomed  to  death, — not  simply  a  death  which 
means  the  dissolution  of  this  physical  body ; 
but,  as  we  have  all  been  taught,  no  matter  in 
what  Christian  denomination  we  may  have 
been  trained,  there  waits  those  who  are  not 
saved  a  second  death  which  is  eternal. 

This  is  the  ordinary  story  as  to  the  origin 
and  nature  of  man  which  was  taught  by  the 
Jews  after  it  was  borrowed,  during  the  time  of 
their  captivity,  and  which  has  been  held 
from  that  day  to  this  in  Christendom,  and 
accepted  with  practical  universality.  Man 
created  then  perfect,  voluntarily  rebelling 
against  God,  and  moral  evil,  suffering,  death, — 
the  penalties  inflicted  by  the  Divine  Power, — 
these  make  up  the  tale  of  human  history. 

It  is  very  strange  that  until  within  the  last 
fifty  years  there  has  practically  been  no  ra- 
tional study  whatever  anywhere  in  the  world 
that  has  attempted  to  investigate  the  problems 
of  the  origin  and  the  nature  of  man.  This 
seems  like  a  startling  statement ;  but  you  will 
see  how  reasonable  it  is  when  I  remind  you  of 
the  fact  that  among  early,  ignorant  peoples 
there  were  no  means  of  study  or  investigation. 
The  mind  of  man  had  not  sufficiently  devel- 


Man  n 

oped  to  make  him  capable  of  undertaking  so 
crisfantic  a  task.  And  then  there  were  reHp  ious 
prejudice  and  tradition  —  among  the  most 
powerful  influences  in  the  world — standing  in 
the  way.  The  credulous  early  tribes  easily 
accepted  without  question  any  statement  made 
to  them  by  their  leaders  and  their  priests,  and 
did  not  think  of  studying  the  matter,  even 
if  they  had  been  able  to  study  it,  which  they 
were  not. 

There  was  then  no  rational  investigation  in 
this  direction  until  the  two  or  three  centuries 
of  the  last  part  of  the  history  of  Greece  pre- 
ceding the  birth  of  Christ.  Science  in  some 
true  sense  had  been  born  and  was  beginning 
to  develop  among  the  later  Greeks.  But, 
unfortunately,  young  Christianity  adopted  a 
Persian  or  Babylonian  legend  which  the  Jews 
had  borrowed, — adopted  it  as  an  infallible, 
divine  revelation  explaining  the  origin  and 
nature  of  man.  For  this  story  of  the  creation, 
the  Garden  of  Eden,  the  serpent,  and  the 
fall,  was  not  even  original  with  the  Jews.  It 
was  Persian  or  Babylonian  tradition,  which, 
as  has  already  been  said,  was  borrowed  during 
the  time  of  the  captivity. 

Early  Christianity  accepted  this  story  as 
infallibly  revealing  divine  truth.     So,  do  you 


74  Man 

not  see,  for  the  first  fifteen  hundred  years  of 
Christian  history  scientific  investigation  was 
practically  impossible  ?  It  was  forbidden  as 
heresy ;  it  was  daring  to  doubt  the  word  of 
God.  So,  when  the  mind  of  man  did  wake 
up  after  the  long  sleep  of  the  early  centuries 
and  the  Middle  Ages,  and  began  to  question, 
the  questioning  had  to  be  done  by  stealth. 
Men  investigated  in  hidden  corners,  in  out-of- 
the-way  places ;  they  involved  their  theories 
of  truth  in  allegories  ;  they  would  put  forth 
tentatively  a  statement  which,  to  the  modern 
reader,  clearly  shows  what  they  were  really 
believing,  and  then,  on  the  basis  of  revelation, 
apparently  deny  and  repudiate  it,  because 
they  dared  not  do  otherwise. 

There  was,  then,  say  for  fifteen  hundred 
years,  no  science,  no  investigation,  as  to  these 
great  problems.  Then  men  began  to  dare  to 
think ;  began  to  win  intellectual  freedom,  so 
that  it  was  safe  to  think ;  achieved  at  last 
thinking  independence  ;  and  then  for  the  first 
time  since  the  world  began  were  we  in  a  con- 
dition to  attack  a  problem  like  this  with  any 
hope  of  its  solution. 

In  the  modern  world  there  were  foresfleams 
and  precursors  of  what  in  all  future  ages  will 
be  regarded  as  the  most  distinguishing  feature 


Man  75 

of  the  nineteenth  century,  ,the  Doctrine  of 
Evohition.  Who  framed  it  ?  Buffon,  Goethe, 
Geoffroy  Saint-Hilaire,  Lamarck,  the  elder 
Darwin — men  hke  these  speculated,  felt  their 
way,  wondered,  asked  questions,  but  came  to 
no  solution.  Herbert  Spencer,  in  1852,  pub- 
lished an  ar^cle  called  "  The  Development 
Hypothesis,"  in  which  he  outlined  the  entire 
scheme  of  evolution,  including  the  universe  as 
we  know  it  to-day.  But  this  was  philosophy, 
and  not  science.  Herbert  Spencer  no  more 
than  his  predecessors  had  put  his  finger  on 
the  key-point  of  the  situation.  That  is,  he 
did  not  point  out  a  real  cause  which  could  ac- 
count for  supposed  changes.  In  1859,  seven 
years  later,  Darwin  published  The  Oi'igin  of 
Species.  Alfred  Russel  Wallace,  still  living, 
and  then  at  work  in  the  Malay  Archipelago, 
had  hit  upon  an  independent  discovery  of  the 
same  great  natural  truth. 

Never  since  the  world  began  has  a  book 
met  with  such  a  tempest  and  storm  of  obloquy, 
abuse,  and  ridicule  as  did  this  book  of  Darwin's. 
The  relioious  world  was  acjhast.  Here  was  flat 
and  outright  denial  of  revelation.  Here  was 
blasphemy.  Here  was  the  degradation  of 
man,  making  him  akin  to  the  lower  orders  of  life 
on  the  earth.     And  the  witty  paragraphists  of 


76  Man 

the  newspapers  have  found  in  the  supposed 
monkey-origin  of  the  race  infinite  fund  for 
ridicule,  from  that  day  to  this,  developing 
many  varieties  of  wit,  and  exposing  the  fact 
either  that  they  were  too  ignorant  to  know 
what  they  were  talking  about  or  else  that 
they  were  willing  to  accept  the  charge  of  ig- 
norance because  it  gave  them  an  opportunity 
to  appear  smart. 

Never,  I  say,  has  any  book  been  so  abused 
as  this  ;  but  it  rapidly  made  its  way  among  the 
competent,  the  minds  of  those  who  had  been 
seeking  for  some  light  on  the  origin  and  na- 
ture of  man,  until  to-day  there  is  not  a  thinker 
on  the  face  of  the  earth  who  is  aware  of  the 
facts  who  dares  to  question  the  substantial 
truth  of  the  great  discovery  which  Darwin 
made. 

What  is  this  discovery  ?  It  is  a  discovery 
that  all  the  forms  of  life  we  see  on  the  globe 
are  growths,  not  outright  creations.  It  had 
been  believed,  taught  by  all  naturalists  until 
very  recent  years,  that  God  created  outright, 
in  a  moment,  certain  types  and  forms  of  life; 
Then  there  was  some  great  catastrophe  which 
destroyed  them  all  and  then  He  created  another 
and  higher  type  ;  and  so  on  step  by  step,  as  the 
forms  of  life  have  advanced.     God  has  made 


Man  n 

the  new  conditions  and  then  matched  these 
by  new  and  special  creations  of  new  and 
higher  types  of  organism.  This  had  been 
the  behef  until  the  epoch-making  book  of 
Darwin  in  1859.  Since  that  day  all  the  world 
has  come  to  think  of  the  universe  itself  as  a 
growth,  an  unfolding. 

As  a  part  o!  the  evolution  of  the  universe 
this  earth  appeared.  Then  the  lower  types  of 
life.  From  these  low  beginnings  the  forms 
of  life  have  climbed  by  natural  gradation,  one 
type  of  life  growing  out  of,  evolving  from, 
the  preceding.  So  there  is  genetic,  vital  con- 
nection between  the  lowest  form  of  life  on  the 
earth  and  the  highest  and  noblest  type  of 
man.  We  are  all  akin,  one  life.  But  note  if 
you  please,  that  this  doctrine  does  not  degrade 
and  brutalise  man  :  it  lifts  the  level  of  all  life, 
and  teaches  us  to  think  of  the  lowest  and 
highest  as  equally  divine.  It  is  one  life  every- 
where, and  that  one  life  God.  This  is  the 
outcome  of  the  evolution  teaching,  and  not 
that  which  was  rashly  regarded  as  its  logical 
conclusion  at  the  first. 

I  cannot  go  into  an  elaborate  argument,  if 
it  were  needed  at  this  late  day,  to  prove  that 
man  is  evolved  or  developed  from  lower  types 
of  life  ;  but  I  can  give  you  briefly  two  or  three 


78  Man 

facts  which  carry  the  argument  with  them 
irresistibly  to  any  thoughtful  man. 

There  are  just  three  thinkable  ways  by 
which  man  could  have  appeared  on  this  planet. 
We  know  that  there  was  a  time  when  he  was 
not  here  :  we  know  that  now  he  is  here.  How 
did  he  get  here — by  what  process  ?  That  is 
the  problem  which  naturalists  set  themselves 
to  study.  You  can  think  that  the  story  in 
Genesis  is  literal  fact,  that  the  Almighty  God 
of  this  universe  took  clay,  as  a  sculptor  does, 
and  shaped  it  into  the  image  of  a  man,  then 
breathed  into  the  nostrils  and  conferred  life 
upon  what  was  dead.  That  is  a  possible, 
thinkable  theory.  A  "  theory,"  I  say,  by  way 
of  courtesy ;  for  it  is  not  a  scientific  theory. 
A  scientific  theory  must  have  some  facts  on 
which  to  base  it,  and  out  of  which  to  construct 
it ;  but  there  are  no  facts  in  this  connection. 
So  it  is  not  a  scientific  theory. 

The  second  way  by  which  man  might  pos- 
sibly have  come  here  is  this.  We  may  think 
that  he  might  have  been  born  of  parents  very 
much  unlike  himself;  as  though,  for  example 
a  doof  were  born  of  a  horse. 

A  third  way  is  this, — he  might  have  been 
born  of  parents  slightly  unlike  himself.  He 
might  have  appeared  as  an  advance  in  certain 


Man  79 

directions  on  this  parent ;  and  this  may  have 
been  the  method  all  the  way  down  the  Hne 
of  the  aofes  to  the  beirinningr. 

Now  here  are  three  thinkable  ways.  If 
you  were  confronted  with  two  or  three  possi- 
bilities, and  one  of  them  had  a  little  evidence 
in  its  favour  and  the  others  had  none  at  all, 
as  a  rational  being  you  would  feel  compelled 
to  accept  that  which  had  even  the  slightest 
amount  of  evidence,  though  you  might  not 
regard  it  as  being  nearly  all  you  would  like. 

Now  in  regard  to  this  theory  of  outright 
creation,  in  the  nature  of  things  there  is  no 
possibility  of  one  slightest  particle  of  evidence 
whatever.  Proof  is  out  of  the  question.  In 
regard  to  the  second  theory,  that  man  might 
have  been  born  of  parents  very  much  unlike 
himself,  there  is  no  evidence,  there  is  no  pos- 
sibility of  proof  of  anything  of  the  sort  ever 
having  occurred.  For  the  third  possible  the- 
ory, that  he  might  have  been  born  of  parents 
slightly  unlike  himself,  and  so  have  advanced 
beyond  them,  there  is  a  good  deal  of  evidence. 
In  other  words,  all  the  evidence  there  is  in 
the  world  is  in  favour  of  this  theory,  which 
is  the  theory  of  evolution, — that  man  has 
been  developed  gradually,  slowly,  from  lower 
types  of  life. 


8o  Man 

Now  what  does  this  mean  ?  I  should  be 
ashamed  to  presume  that  I  needed  to  explain 
this  point,  did  I  not  constantly  see  references 
to  it  in  the  great  newspapers  and  hear  it 
on  every  side  in  conversation.  The  popular 
opinion  seems  to  be  that  Darwinism,  or  evo- 
lution, teaches  that  man  has  been  developed 
from  the  ape  ;  and  this  is  the  material  for  all 
the  witty  paragraphs  which  have  enlivened 
the  newspapers  for  the  last  forty  years.  Dar- 
winism teaches  nothinof  of  the  sort. 

What  does  it  teach?  If  I  could  draw  a  dia- 
gram on  a  blackboard,  I  could  make  the 
meaning  very  plain.  Suppose  you  think  of 
the  evolution  of  life  under  the  figure  of  a  vine. 
Take  an  enormous  grape-vine,  if  you  please ; 
picture  it  in  your  mind  for  a  moment.  As 
you  come  up  the  central  stem,  a  branch  goes 
off  on  one  side  :  here  is  one  type  and  kind  of 
life,  one  species,  we  will  say,  of  creature.  A 
little  farther  up  another  branch  starts  off,  and 
develops  into  another  type  of  life  ;  still  higher, 
another  branch  ;  still  higher,  another  branch, 
— and  so  on,  branchinor  out  into  one  kind  of 
life  after  another.  But  evolution  does  not 
teach  that  one  species  ever  directly  developed 
into  another  species. 

In    other  words,  we  find  the   fishes  ;   then 


Man  8 1 

above  them  are  the  reptiles  ;  but  no  full-grown 
and  developed  fish  ever  changed  into  a  rep- 
tile. After  the  reptiles,  you  have  the  birds  ; 
but  no  completed  reptile  ever  became  a  bird. 
After  the  birds  you  have  the  mammals  ;  but 
no  bird  ever  developed  into  a  mammal.  This 
is  not  evolution,  this  is  not  Darwinism. 

What  does  it  teach  ?  We  know  that  there 
are  creatures,  we  find  their  remains  in  the 
earth's  strata,  who  are  half-bird  and  half-rep- 
tile :  they  have  the  characteristics  of  both, 
so  that  it  is  difficult  for  the  naturalist  to  tell 
which  they  really  are.  What  does  this  mean  ?  It 
means  that  before  the  birds  and  the  reptiles 
had  become  completely  separated  from  each 
other  there  were  these  creatures  with  the 
characteristics  of  the  two,  and  that  then  one 
branch  of  life  shot  off  in  one  direction  and 
developed  all  the  reptiles,  completed  reptilian 
life  in  its  widely  various  forms  ;  and  above 
this  juncture  where  you  find  the  character- 
istics of  both,  another  branch  shot  off,  and 
developed  into  all  the  bird-like  forms. 

So  there  was  a  point  down  below  man, 
and  below  the  ape,  where  there  were  creatures 
manifesting  the  characteristics  of  both  the 
ape  and  the  man,  and  where  it  would  be 
very  difficult,  indeed,  for  a  naturalist  to  tell 


82  Man 

whether  the  creature  was  ape  or  man.  But 
by  and  by  the  ape-like  forms  go  their  own 
way  ;  and  above,  from  this  trunk  of  Hfe,  there 
shoots  out  a  branch,  and  the  lowest  mani- 
festation of  it  is  the  lowest  type  of  the  human. 
This  is  what  evolution  teaches,  that  there  has 
been  this  gradual  development  of  all  these  var- 
ious forms  of  life,  until  on  the  topmost  bough 
there  comes  as  fruitage  this  wonderful  human 
nature  of  ours,  summing  up  in  itself  the  char- 
acteristics of  all  the  forms  of  life  that  have 
preceded  it,  keeping  whatever  is  useful  to  it, 
and  yet  developing  something  higher  and 
finer. 

Man,  then,  originated  in  this  purely  nat- 
ural way  ;  not  without  the  help  and  guidance 
of  God,  but  under  God's  guidance.  In  other 
words,  it  is  not  a  question  as  to  whether  God 
created  us  or  made  us,  whatever  word  you 
choose  to  use,  or  as  to  whether  He  is  our 
Father.  It  is  simply  a  question  of  process, 
of  method,  as  to  how  we  came  to  be  what 
we  are. 

I  have  been  asked  a  great  many  times 
whether  this  theory  of  the  origin  of  man  does 
not  make  it  difficult  for  us  to  believe  in  the  soul. 
Where  does  the  soul  come  in  ?  There  is  no 
more   difficulty  about  it  on  this    theory  than 


Man  83 

there  is  on  the  other.  It  has  always  been 
a  matter  of  speculation  among  philosophers 
as  to  where  the  soul  comes  from.  In  the  old 
days,  in  the  Middle  Ages,  among  the  school- 
men, you  will  find,  if  you  care  to  look  into  the 
matter,  that  there  were  three  speculative  the- 
ories. A  certain  set  of  men  tauijht  that  all 
souls  were  pre-existent,  and  that,  when  a  new 
babe  was  born,  he  was  furnished  with  a  soul 
that  may  have  been  as  old  as  the  angels  or  as 
old  almost  as  God  Himself.  For  a  previous 
immortality  has  been  believed  in  by  some, 
as  well  as  an  immortality  of  the  future. 

Then  there  was  the  theory  called  Traducian^ 
ism.  It  was  believed  that  man  inherited  his 
soul  from  his  father  and  mother,  as  he  inher- 
ited his  other  faculties  and  qualities.  Then 
there  was  Creationism,  which  taught  that  God 
created  a  new  soul  for  every  baby  born  into 
the  world.  So  this  question  as  to  where  the 
soul  comes  from  is  not  necessarily  connected 
with  evolution.      It  is  as  old  as  human  thought. 

I  believe  that  the  soul  began  when  man 
began.  We  know  that  the  animals  below 
us  are  conscious  ;  but  they  are  not  self-con- 
scious. No  animal  ever  thinks  "  I."  No  horse 
or  dog  ever  thinks,  I  am  a  horse,  I  am  a  dog, 
or   wonders  at  the    difference    between    itself 


84  Man 

and  some  other  animal.  But,  when  man 
appeared,  the  "I,"  the  "ego,"  the  self-con- 
scious entity  was  born.  In  other  words,  I 
believe  that  the  divine  life  which  was  in  the 
grass-blade  and  which  climbed  up  through  the 
infinite  ages,  manifesting  itself  in  every  type 
and  form  of  life  until  man  appeared,  with 
man  became  integrated  into  the  ego,  so  that 
man  felt  he  was  a  self,  and  could  speak  of 
God  as  his  Feather,  and  could  reasonably  ex- 
pect to  go  on,  starting  out  upon  an  infinite 
pathway  that  leads  into  the  future. 

Darwinism,  it  seems  to  me  (and  I  must 
take  your  time  long  enough  to  dwell  for  a  mo- 
ment on  this),  gives  us  an  entirely  rational 
and  a  much  more  hopeful  account  of  the 
origin,  or  existence,  rather,  of  evil,  of  pain,  of 
sorrow,  of  death,  than  does  the  old  theory. 
It  seems  to  me  a  hopeless  way  of  looking 
at  human  history  to  suppose  that  we  began 
in  perfection,  that  we  immediately  fell,  and 
that  God  .was  angry  with  us  and  has  been 
punishing  the  world  ever  since  with  moral  evil 
and  pain  and  infinite  suffering  after  death. 
If  we  accept  evolution,  which  has  been  de- 
monstrated as  true,  where  do  we  land  ?  Note 
I  say,  demonstrated  as  true.  It  is  no  theory 
in  the  sense  that  you  are  at  liberty  to  accept 


Man  85 

or  reject  it,  as  you  please.     Ijt  is  proved  to  be 
true. 

What  is  the  outcome  of  it?  In  the  first 
place,  we  are  confronted  with  this  significant 
and  wonderful  fact.  The  world  has  puzzled 
itself  always  over  the  origin  of  evil, — why 
God  permitted  evil.  But,  now  that  we  think 
of  man  in  the  light  of  this  new  and  magnifi- 
cent truth,  we  have  no  origin  of  evil  to  con- 
tend with  or  account  for.  It  is  the  origin 
of  ofoodness  that  we  are  to  think  of.  For 
in  this  lower  animal  world  all  that  we  think  of 
as  evil, — jealousy,  hatred,  selfishness,  greed, 
horrors,  wars,  murders,  death, — all  these  things 
existed  from  the  first.  They  existed  before 
man  appeared  ;  but  they  were  not  evil,  be- 
cause there  was  no  conscience,  there  was  no 
standard  of  right  and  wrong.  It  was  not  an 
immoral  world  :  it  was  an  unmoral  world.  So 
that,  when  man  appeared,  instead  of  its  being 
the  origin  of  evil,  it  was  the  origin  of  good- 
ness. When  the  conscience  first  became  de- 
veloped and  man  was  able  to  recognise 
himself  as  capable  of  doing  either  right  or 
wrong,  then  he  took  an  immense  step  in 
advance.  It  was  not  a  fall  :  it  was  an  ascent. 
So  this  greater  truth  for  ever  does  away  with 
all  possibility  of  belief  in  the  Fall  of  Man. 


86  Man 

The  recognition  of  the  distinction  between 
right  and  wrong  was  an  Immense  step  in  ad- 
vance. Man  became  a  moral  being,  capable 
of  improvement,  looking  down  upon  his  lower 
self,  seeing  the  Imperfections  of  his  nature, 
and  strivinof  to  outQ^row  them  and  leave  them 
behind.  So  there  Is  no  doctrine  of  the  intro- 
duction of  evil  into  a  good  universe,  on  this 
theory  :  it  is  the  coming  of  good,  the  recog- 
nition of  good  in  an  unmoral  universe. 

Again,  we  have  not  to  think  of  God's  inflict- 
ing pain  as  a  punishment.  People  have  been 
asking  from  the  beginning  of  the  world  until 
to-day :  What  have  I  done  that  God  inflicts 
this  punishment  upon  me  ?  Why  does  He 
make  me  suffer  ?  Why  must  my  nerves  thrill 
and  tingle  with  pain  ?  Think  for  a  moment. 
In  the  light  of  this  theory,  pain  as  an  argu- 
ment against  the  goodness  of  God  utterly  dis- 
appears. There  are  two  kinds  of  pain  in  the 
universe.  .  There  is  the  necessary  pain,  and 
the  needless  pain, — the  pain  that  we  bring 
upon  ourselves  without  our  being  obliged 
to  do  it  and  that  which  we  voluntarily  inflict 
on  other  people.  These  things  are  evil,  but 
God  is  not  responsible  for  them  :  they  are  not 
a  charofe  against  His  o;oodness. 

Now,  all  the   necessary  pain  of   the  world 


Man  ^7 

is  seen  to  be  infinitely  beneficent.  Instead  of 
its  being  something-  that  we  must  account  for, 
apologise  for,  it  is  something  to  be  grateful 
for.  You  cannot  conceive  of  the  existence 
of  nerves  which  can  thrill  with  pleasure  with- 
out their  also  being  capable  of  thrilling  with 
pain.  Then,  if  a  race  of  creatures  could  be 
created  and  placed  upon  the  earth  incapable 
of  feeling  pain,  they  would  be  wiped  out  of 
existence  in  six  months.  The  necessary  pain 
of  the  world  is  simply  the  signal  set  up  marked 
"  Danger,"  "  No  thoroughfare,"  warning  us 
against  things  that  would  do  us  harm.  All 
the  needful  pain  of  the  world  is  a  token  of  the 
love,  the  beneficence,  the  kindliness,  and  the 
care  of  our  Father. 

Then,  too,  death,  instead  of  being  the  last 
great  evil,  the  one  final  curse  of  God,  the 
mark  of  His  disapprobation  of  a  ruined  and 
fallen  race — death  is  found  to  be  as  natural 
as  life,  a  part  of  the  divine  order,  not  some- 
thing to  be  accounted  for ;  as  natural  as  the 
sunset  after  a  sunrise,  that  which  rounds  out 
human  life.  Death  is  not  an  evil — I  mean 
natural  death,  death  after  a  well-ordered  life  : 
it  is  only  premature  death,  which  God, 
again,  is  not  generally  responsible  for,  which 
is   an    evil.     If    there   be    another    life,    then 


88  Man 

death  is  the  greatest  blessing  that  God  has 
conferred  in  love  and  tenderness  upon  His 
children  ;  for  it  is  the  gateway  of  immortality. 

You  see,  then,  in  the  light  of  this  theory  of 
evolution,  this  way  of  looking  at  the  origin 
and  nature  of  man,  the  old  difficulties  fade 
away,  the  problems  are  changed,  and,  though 
they  were  thought  to  be  insoluble,  are  found 
to  be  capable  of  solution. 

And  now  at  the  last  I  wish  to  call  your  atten- 
tion to  the  fact  that  the  disproof  of  the  doc- 
trine of  the  Fall  of  Man  has  in  it  the  seed 
of  the  universal  dissolution  of  the  theolocries 
of  Christendom.  Every  one  of  the  theolo- 
gies of  Christendom  has  been  based  on  the 
doctrine  of  the  Fall  of  Man :  their  scheme 
of  theology  has  been  a  plan  for  the  saving 
of  man  from  the  results  of  the  supposed  fall. 
Within  the  last  fifty  years,  as  I  have  said, — 
and  inevitably  then  because  it  could  not  have 
come  before, — it  has  been  demonstrated  that 
what  was  supposed  to  be  a  fall  is  an  ascent ; 
and  every  one  of  the  great  and  towering  the- 
ologies of  Christendom  are  crumbling  at  their 
foundations,  and  of  necessity  must  fall. 

It  is  a  new  problem  which  is  presented  to 
the  world ;  and  the  churches  are  beginning 
to  readjust  themselves  to  it  instinctively  and 


Man  89 

gradually.  Less  and  less  do  they  talk  about 
the  wrath  of  God,  less  and  less  about  the  fall 
of  man  :  it  has  become  poetry,  an  allegory. 
Less  and  less  do  they  frighten  men  and 
women  with  lurid  pictures  of  the  coming 
horrors  of  another  life.  More  and  more  do 
they  tell  us  that  it  is  possible  for  men  nat- 
urally to  be  good,  and  that  the  one  great  end 
and  object  of  all  churches  and  all  preaching 
and  all  human  effort  is  to  help  men  to  be 
good.  Less  and  less  do  we  hear  of  salvation, 
in  the  technical  sense  of  that  word.  More 
and  more  do  we  hear  of  education,  of  training, 
of  helping  to  set  the  human  race  in  bet- 
ter conditions,  of  cleansing  and  purifying 
our  environments,  of  making  it  possible 
for  people  to  live  sweet  and  simple  and  whole- 
some lives.  More  and  more  talk  do  we  hear 
of  improving  the  conditions  that  surround  us. 
These  are  taking  the  place  of  the  old  ideas 
of  a  supernatural  salvation  from  an  eternal 
woe. 

It  is  education  that  the  race  needs,  not 
salvation.  I  am  using  the  words  in  the  tech- 
nical sense.  Not  education  in  the  sense  of 
teaching  people  things, — that  is  not  education, 
— education  in  the  sense  of  unfolding,  evolv- 
ing, developing  what  is  in  man,  his  capacities 


90  Man 

and  possibilities.  What  the  race  needs  is  a 
chance  to  live  and  become  its  best  self. 

I  do  not  for  a  moment  think  that  the  life 
and  teaching,  the  lovely  figure,  of  the  Nazar- 
ene  are  to  pass  away  or  lessen  in  their  in- 
fluence. I  believe  that  Jesus  in  the  ages  to 
come  will  be  more  and  more;  for  Jesus  did 
not  teach  what  have  become  the  fundamental 
principles  and  ideas  of  the  theology  that  has 
worn  his  name.  Jesus  is  the  ideal  man,  the 
son  of  God,  the  embodiment  of  love  and  ten- 
derness and  pity  and  human  help.  So  he  will 
march  on,  radiant  as  the  morning,  leading  the 
advance  of  mankind,  an  ideal,  unapproachable 
because  we  shall  lift  him  and  make  him  more 
and  more  beautiful  in  our  thought  as  the 
world  advances.  He  will  influence  and  stim- 
ulate and  lift  up  the  race. 

But  henceforth  the  problem  of  religion  is 
not  to  save  us  from  the  wrath  of  a  God  which 
does  not  exist,  is  not  to  deliver  us  from  a  hell 
which  is  a  figment  of  the  barbaric  imaginations 
of  the  ancient  world :  it  is  to  develop  man 
more  and  more,  to  carry  on  the  work  of  evo- 
lution ;  for  evolution  is  done,  practically,  with 
our  physical  form,  so  far  as  man  is  concerned. 

Note  one  very  interesting  thing.  The  low- 
est forms  of  life  are  horizontal.     As  life  lifts, 


Man  91 

creatures  begin  to  rise,  until,  when  you  come 
to  man,  he  is  perpendicular.  You  can  carry 
the  process  no  further  unless  you  reverse  it 
and  revert  to  the  original  form.  The  body  is 
complete  except  that  it  may  be  made  finer 
and  finer.  Evolution  has  transferred  its  work- 
ing to  the  mind,  the  heart,  the  moral  nature, 
the  soul ;  and  so  the  ages  that  are  to  come 
shall  find  man  ever  growing  more  and  more 
into  the  likeness  of  his  ideal,  which  is  the  like- 
ness of  his  Father,  God. 


V 

BIBLES 

HAS  God  ever  spoken  to  men  ?  If  so,  has 
He  got  through  speaking,  or  does  He 
speak  to-day  ?  Assuming  that  God  exists, 
and  that  we  are  His  children,  we  should  cer- 
tainly suppose  that  He  would  have  something 
to  say  to  us.  We  should  expect,  at  least, 
that  He  would  give  us  adequate  guidance  in 
the  most  important  affairs  of  life.  Has  He 
spoken,  then?     Does  He  speak? 

So  far  as  we  can  trace  the  beliefs  of  the 
ancient  world,  men  have  always  supposed  that 
they  received  messages  from  the  Unseen, 
from  their  gods,  or,  when  they  came  to  be 
monotheists,  from  their  God.  It  may  be  well 
for  us  to  note  some  of  the  many  and  various 
ways  by  which  they  have  supposed  these 
words  of  God  to  come. 

Stepping  outside  our  line  of  Christian  tra- 
dition, we  find  the  ancient  priests  believed 
that  they  could   divine    concerning   the   pur- 

Q2 


Bibles  93 

poses  of  the  gods  by  watching  the  flight  of 
birds  or  by  studying  the  entrails  of  animals  as 
they  were  being  sacrificed.  There  were  cer- 
tain sacred  trees  in  different  parts  of  the 
world.  It  was  supposed  that  the  divine  will 
could  be  learned  by  listening  to  the  noise 
of  the  winds  in  the  leaves  of  these  trees,  and 
interpreting  t'he  message. 

In  other  parts  of  the  world  there  were  mys- 
terious and  sacred  caverns,  from  which  issued 
what  we  should  call  to-day  natural  gases. 
These  gases  had  the  power  to  produce  certain 
effects  which  were  called  inspiration  on  the 
part  of  the  priests  who  inhaled  them,  and 
what  they  said  in  these  conditions  were  taken 
to  be  messaijes  from  the  Unseen.  Then  rev- 
elatlons  came  by  means  of  visions  or  voices. 
Those  who  were  insane  were  supposed  to 
be  taken  possession  of,  and  to  be  speaking 
words  of  mysterious  import.  In  all  these 
many  ways,  and  in  others  which  need  not 
be  enumerated,  people  outside  the  line  of  our 
Christian  history  have  believed  that  they  re- 
ceived messaofes  from  the  orods. 

When  we  come  to  trace  the  beliefs  of  the 
people  from  whom  we  have  inherited  our 
religion,  we  find  that  they  held  similar  beliefs. 
There  were   other  ways   besides   these,  also, 


94  Bibles 

in  which  they  trusted.  We  do  not  know  just 
how  they  were  used,  but  in  the  old  days  the 
high  priests  were  beUeved  to  be  able  to  com- 
municate with  the  Divine  by  using  the  Urim 
and  the  Thummim.  These  were  sacred  stones. 
In  what  way  they  were  supposed  to  commun- 
icate the  divine  will  we  are  now  not  certain. 
They  also  expected  to  fmd  out  the  hidden 
things  by  means  of  the  ephod,  a  holy  girdle 
worn  by  the  high  priest.  It  was  not  uncommon 
for  them  to  cast  lots,  expecting  God  to  direct 
how  the  lots  should  fall.  We  find  the  eleven 
apostles  adopting  this  method  in  the  sacred 
work  of  electing  a  twelfth  man  to  take  the 
place  of  Judas  after  the  betrayal. 

Not  only  among  these  were  there  visions, 
messages,  voices,  men  sent,  books  written, 
but  there  were  also  dreams,  there  were  ecsta- 
sies. St.  Paul,  for  example,  tells  us  how  he 
was  carried  away  in  an  ecstasy  and  visited 
the  third  heaven,  hearing  words  and  seeing 
things  which  it  was  not  lawful  for  him  at 
present  to  disclose. 

In  all  these  ways,  then,  and  in  many  others 
men  have  supposed  that  they  received  mes- 
sages from  God.  Of  course,  the  most  import- 
ant way  in  the  thought  of  Christendom  to-day 
is  that  of  being  inspired  to  write  certain  parts 


Bibles  95 

of  a  book  which  has  come  to  be  called  the 
Bible.  Before  considering  that,  however,  let 
us  raise  a  preliminary  question. 

Is  there  any  way  that  we  can  think  of  by 
which  God  could  speak  an  infallible  message  to 
men  ?  For,  of  course,  the  pivot  on  which  the 
whole  question  turns  is  this  matter  of  infalHbil- 
ity.  Supposed  man  has  a  vision,  whether  in 
the  night  or  in  the  day.  Itmay  be  an  authentic 
thing  to  him.  But  can  he  convey  it  in  any 
infallible  way  to  others  ?  We  must  trust  him, 
— both  for  the  accuracy  of  his  statements  and 
for  his  interpretation  of  the  meaning  of  that 
which  he  has  seen.  Can  we  be  sure  that  he 
is  accurate  always  in  his  statements  ? 

Suppose  a  man  claims  that  the  Holy  Spirit 
has  taken  possession  of  him,  and  that  he 
speaks  by  inspiration.  He  may  be  ever  so 
thoroughly  convinced  of  this  ;  but  how  is  he 
going  to  convince  the  world  ?  We  cannot 
help  wondering  as  to  whether  he  is  mistaken  ; 
and  when  we  find  people  claiming  to  be  in- 
spired, as  we  do,  contradicting  each  other  and 
giving  inconsistent  messages,  then  we  feel 
sure  that  at  least  some  of  them  must  be  mis- 
taken, and  it  may  be  impracticable  for  us 
to  decide  which. 

Take  any  message  that  you  can  imagine ; 


96  Bibles 

and  by  the  time  it  has  become  a  second  or  a 
third  hand  message,  an  element  of  uncertainty- 
has  entered  in  which  makes  it  impossible  for  a 
rational  man  to  have  any  trust  in  its  infallibility. 

Suppose  a  book  be  written  ;  and  let  us  con- 
cede for  a  moment  that  in  the  first  instance 
it  is  absolutely  infallible, — that  is,  it  is  a  di- 
rect and  precise  expression  of  the  thought 
and  the  will  of  God.  But  no  words  have 
ever  yet  been  framed  which  conveyed  precisely 
the  same  ideas  to  every  class  of  mind  and 
every  grade  of  Intelligence.  So  even  this 
may  not  give  the  same  message  to  everybody. 

But  by  and  by  this  original  writing  is  lost. 
It  has  been  copied  :  who  knows  whether  the 
copyist  was  infallible  ?  It  has  been  copied 
over  and  over  and  over  again,  has  passed 
through  a  hundred  hands.  It  has  been  trans- 
lated into  other  lanoruasfes.  Who  knows 
whether  the  translator  was  infallible  ?  So,  if 
the  original  writer  received  the  infallible  word 
of  God,  by  the  next  generation,  by  the  time  it 
was  transmitted  to  some  other  people,  an 
element  of  inevitable  uncertainty  has  entered 
in.  So  I,  for  one,  cannot  conceive  of  any 
way  but  one, — which,  perhaps,  I  shall  refer  to 
by  and  by — through  which  we  can  get  an  in- 
fallible message  from  the  Divine. 


Bibles  97 

Suppose,  for  example,  that  the  stars  were 
arranoecl  so  as  to  read  across  the  face  of 
the  night  heavens,  **  There  is  a  God,"  and  to 
give  us  His  name.  Who  could  say  but  what 
they  were  accidentally  arranged  in  that  order  ? 
The  words  would  necessarily,  at  any  rate,  be 
in  some  particular  language.  Who  would  be 
sure  of  the  tninslation  ?  You  see,  even  in  a 
thing  like  this,  there  would  inevitably  arise 
a  question  in  the  minds  of  after  generations  ; 
for  the  arranofement  of  the  constellations  to- 
day  is  certainly  as  wonderful  as  though  they 
spelled  out  words  in  some  tongue  which  is  no 
lonorer  a  living^  lanoruag-e. 

There  seems  to  me,  then,  no  way  by  which 
we  can  escape  a  certain  element  of  question 
as  to  the  infallibihty  of  any  word  that  claims 
to  come  to  us  from  God. 

But  now  another  question  :  Do  we  need  an 
infallible  revelation?  If  we  do,  why?  If  it 
indeed  be  true  that  the  race  is  in  a  moral  and 
spiritual  condition  such  as  it  could  not  dis- 
cover and  find  out  for  itself,  and  if  it  be  fur- 
ther true  that  God  has  arbitrarily  doomed  the 
world  to  an  endless  hell  in  the  future  on 
account  of  this  condition  concerning  which 
we  are  ignorant  and  are  not  wise  enough  to 
discover,    why,    then,    of   course,   God   would 


98  Bibles 

have  to  tell  us  about  it,  and  tell  us  very 
plainly.  But  a  supposition  like  this  would 
presuppose  God  to  be  an  unjust  and  immoral 
being  whose  word  even  would  not  be  worthy 
ot  our  trust. 

It  does  not  seem  to  me,  then,  that  we  need 
an  infallible  revelation  in  religion  any  more 
than  we  need  one  in  agriculture,  any  more 
than  we  need  one  in  chemistry  or  geology  or 
astrology  or  engineering  or  mechanics  of  any 
kind,  any  more  than  the  financier  needs  one 
in  Wall  Street. 

I  suppose  all  of  us  would  be  glad  to  have 
infallible  guidance  in  the  particular  matter  in 
which  we  happen  to  be  interested  ;  but  I  do 
not  believe  that  it  would  be  well  for  us.  And 
let  me  tell  you  why.  If  the  world  had  had, 
years  ago,  an  infallible  revelation  made  in  re- 
gard to  any  department  of  human  endeavour, 
do  you  not  see  that  it  would  have  interfered 
with  the  development  of  the  human  mind  itself  ? 
Every  teacher  knows  that  it  is  not  wise  to  put 
in  the  hands  of  his  pupil  in  mathematics  a  book 
containing  the  answer  to  all  the  problems. 
He  knows,  if  he  does,  that  the  mathematical 
ability  of  the  boy  will  never  be  developed 
as  it  must  be  by  his  own  working  out  of 
those  problems  ;  and  it  is  much  more  important 


Bibles  99 

that  the  pupil  be  educated  inathematically,  to 
evolve,  to  develop  in  the  process  of  study,  than 
it  is  that  he  Q-Qt  the  rio-ht  answer.  The  ri<rht 
answer  is  entirely  a  secondary  consideration. 
It  is  the  growth  and  development  of  the  pupil 
that  is  all-important. 

Suppose  God,  a  thousand  years  ago,  had 
revealed  to  the  world  all  that  is  known  to-day 
about  steam  and  its  application  to  the  many 
industries  of  life.  The  world  would  not  have 
been  ready  for  it  in  the  first  place — it  would 
only  partially  have  comprehended  what  it  was 
all  about ;  and  it  would  have  interfered  with 
the  education  of  the  race  out  of  which  have 
come  the  invention,  the  discovery,  and  the 
mastery  of  this  tremendous  force. 

I  believe,  then,  that  an  infallible  revelation 
in  any  department  of  human  life  would  not  be 
a  good  thing  for  us  :  it  would  be  an  evil  thing. 

And  now  let  me  appeal  for  a  moment  to 
history  to  justify  my  statement.  There  have 
been  a  great  many  infallible  revelations  given 
to  the  world  ;  that  is,  if  we  are  to  trust  the 
word  of  those  who  have  received  them.  They 
have  had  them  in  India,  two  or  three  of  them  ; 
in  China,  the  teachings  of  Confucius  ;  in  Ara- 
bia, the  Koran,  the  Bible  of  the  Mohammed- 
ans.      They    had    them    in    Old    Testament 


loo  Bibles 

times,  in  New  Testament  times.  We  have 
had  one  or  two  in  the  modern  world.  The 
Book  of  Mormon  is  precisely  as  infallible 
as  any  other  Bible  that  the  world  has  ever 
received,  if  we  are  to  take  the  opinions  of 
its  believers  as  settling  the  matter.  And  now 
the  latest  of  them  all,  Mrs.  Eddy,  has  made  a 
deliberate  and  definite  statement  to  the  world 
that  her  book.  Science  and  Health,  is  in- 
spired ;  that  she  did  not  write  it.  So  we 
have  a  large  number  of  infallible  books  in 
the  world.  The  only  trouble  with  them  for 
the  student  is  that  they  do  not  at  all  agree 
with  one  another ;  and  we  cannot  believe 
that  God  is  the  author  of  contradiction  and 
confusion. 

Go  a  little  closer,  and  note  another  fact. 
Suppose  you  visit  India  or  China  or  Arabia 
— any  of  the  countries  where  they  have  an  infal- 
lible book,  it  does  not  make  a  particle  of  dif- 
ference which.  Does  the  book  which  is  an 
infallible  revelation  carry  the  same  message 
to  everybody  ?  Not  at  all.  You  have  schools, 
different  philosophies,  sects,  divisions,  in  all 
these  countries,  each  one  of  them  claiming 
the  authority  of  the  one  infallible  revelation 
on  behalf  of  its  peculiar  teaching.  So,  how- 
ever infallible   it    may   be,    it  does  not  carry 


Bibles  loi 

infallible  guidance  to  the  peo4;)le  who  devoutly 
believe  in  it. 

Not  only,  then,  do  the  different  Bibles  of 
the  world  contradict  each  other,  but  they  do 
not  carry  the  same  message  to  those  that 
accept  them. 

Come  now  to  our  own  Bible  for  the  mo- 
ment.  Do  all  the  people  who  accept  the  Old 
and  New  Testaments  as  an  infallible  revela- 
tion from  God  ofet  the  same  message  from 
and  through  them  ?  We  know  they  do  not. 
Doctrinally,  with  regard  to  practical  matters, 
in  all  sorts  of  ways,  they  differ.  Here  are  the 
Baptists,  for  example,  insisting  that  the  Bible 
teaches  one  authoritative  method  of  baptism  ; 
and  nobody  else  at  all  agrees  with  them. 
Here  are  the  Presbyterians  and  the  Congre- 
gationalists  and  the  Episcopalians,  each  one 
claiming  that  a  certain  church  order  is  clearly 
revealed  in  the  New  Testament ;  and  each 
one  of  them  feels  sure  that  he  has  got  it  and 
the  rest  have  not. 

Then  as  to  matters  of  doctrine,  in  regard 
to  the  nature  of  man,  the  fall  of  man,  the  na- 
ture of  Jesus,  atonement,  future  punishment, 
— all  sorts  of  problems :  as  many  different 
opinions  are  held  as  there  are  different  sects 
and    denominations,    and    each    one    of   them 


I02  Bibles 

appeals  to  the  one  infallible  message  as  its 
authority.  Something  wrong  somewhere.  It 
cannot  be  perfectly  clear. 

And  then  another  thing.  Those  persons 
who  have  believed — and  this  is  true  not  of 
our  Bible  only,  but  of  all  Bibles — that  they 
had  an  absolutely  infallible  book  have  stood 
square  in  the  way  of  human  progress,  always, 
everywhere,  and  of  necessity.  An  infallibility 
cannot  possibly  consist  with  free  inquiry,  with 
discovery  and  advance. 

You  remember  the  old  Mohammedan,  who 
said  concerninof  the  famous  Alexandrian  li- 
brary  :  "  If  it  agrees  with  the  Koran,  then  we 
do  not  need  it.  If  it  does  not,  it  is  wrong, 
and  ought  to  be  destroyed."  So  he  burned 
the  thousands  of  volumes.  This  is  the  spirit 
of  infallibility  :  nothing  can  be  permitted  that 
is  not  consistent  with  the  book,  with  "  my " 
interpretation  of  the  book  ;  for  that,  of  course, 
is  the  only  one  that  is  correct.  So  the  world 
must  stand  still  where  the  writer  of  the  book 
had  stopped  thinking. 

Infallibility  stands,  then,  and  of  necessity, 
in  the  way  of  all  growth.  It  produces  certain 
other  results- which  are  evil,  and  only  evil,  and 
evil  continually.  It  cultivates  spiritual  con- 
ceit, superciliousness    and  pride.      Remember 


Bibles  103 

the  word  of  the  Psahnist,  iirn).  see  how  out  of 
it  have  come  bitterness,  hatred,  and  persecu- 
tion in  every  age.  The  Psalmist  says  :  "  Do 
not  I  hate  them  that  hate  thee  ?  I  hate  them 
with  perfect  hatred." 

Queen  Mary  of  England,  popularly  called 
the  Bloody,  said,  "  Since  God  is  going  to  burn 
for  ever  the  heretics  in  another  life,  it  is  fitting 
that  I  should  imitate  Him  and  burn  them  in 
this." 

Out  of  this  belief  in  "my"  infallibility 
comes  the  fact  that  "  I  "  cannot  tolerate  any- 
body who  differs  from  me.  And,  if  it  is 
believed  that  I  stand  as  sponsor  for  and 
representative  of  God,  then  I  have  no  right 
to  tolerate.  I  stand  as  voicing  the  wrath  of 
the  Almighty  ;  and  you  know  what  that  means 
always,  always  has  meant,  when  a  man  has 
arrogated  to  himself    that    supreme    position. 

The  spirit  of  the  Romish  Church,  we  say, 
is  changed,  is  becoming  broader  and  more 
liberal.  It  is — under  compulsion.  What  did 
the  Pope  say  the  other  day  ?  The  Duke  of 
Norfolk,  the  titled  leader  of  the  Catholic  fac- 
tion in  England,  led  six  or  eight  hundred 
pilgrims  to  Rome  ;  and  the  Pope,  when  he 
received  them,  complained,  whiningly,  of  the 
fact  that  he  was  kept  a  captive  by  the  secular 


I04  Bibles 

power  and  had  no  longer  any  temporal  rule, 
and  that  therefore  he  and  the  Church  and  the 
truth  and  God  were  being  insulted  by  Protes- 
tant worship  springing  up  right  there  in  Rome. 
That  is  the  spirit  of  the  Pope  to-day — if  he 
only  had  the  power. 

It  is  the  spirit  of  all  infallibilities,  and  of 
necessity  must  be.  Infallibility  has  hated, 
has  persecuted,  has  kindled  fires,  has  turned 
the  thumb-screw,  has  manipulated  the  rack, 
has  invented  all  tortures,  has  driven  believers 
into  the  wilderness,  has  cast  them  over  the 
edge  of  precipices,  has  pursued  them  with  the 
sword,  has  watered  the  streets  of  the  Old 
World  with  blood,  has  lighted  up  the  dark- 
ness of  the  ages  with  fires  that  would  seem  to 
have  been  kindled  from  the  lower  regions. 
This  has  been  the  result  of  infallible  revelations. 
We  do  not  need  them.  We  thank  God  that 
in  this  modern  world  we  are  getting  free  from 
the  superstitious  belief  that  we  have  them. 

Now,  then,  where  are  we  in  regard  to  this 
matter  of  God's  speaking  to  the  world  ? 
Does  He  not  speak?  Has  He  not  spoken? 
I  said  near  the  beginning  of  this  chapter  that 
I  might  refer  to  the  possibility  of  certain  ut- 
terances of  the  Divine  as  beino-  fixed  and  final. 
To   what   did    I    refer  ?     I    referred   to  such 


Bibles  105 

thini^s  as  these  :  Human  experience,  for  exam- 
ple, during  the  progress  of  ages,  has  wrought 
out  certain  results  as  bearing  on  the  treatment 
of  the  body,  on  moral  problems,  the  relations 
of  men  and  women  to  each  other,  on  civilisa- 
tion, that  are  practically  infallible.  No  sane 
man  doubts  them,  no  lover  of  his  kind  ques- 
tions their  binding  force.  There  are  certain 
words  of  the  Divine  spoken  through  human 
experience,  which  are  fixed  and  settled  words. 
In  the  realms  of  science  there  are  utterances 
of  the  Divine  that  we  may  consider  as  clear  and 
unmistakable.  Whatever  is  demonstrated  as 
truth  in  geology,  in  chemistry,  in  astronomy, 
in  any  department  of  scientific  study,  this  is 
infallible  as  far  as  it  oroes.  But  none  of  these 
are  matters  about  which  envy  and  jealousy 
and  hatred  between  man  and  man  can  ever 
be  raised. 

Infallibility,  then,  we  may  find  within  very 
narrow  limits,  and  in  certain  directions  in 
these  departments  of  human  study.  I  may 
get  a  message  from  God  which  is  practically 
clear  and  unmistakable  for  me,  sufficient  for 
my  guidance  ;  and  yet  I  may  not  impose  it  on 
another.  I  am  bound  by  my  own  conscience, 
my  own  conviction  of  what  is  true  and  right ; 
but  I  have  no  authority  to  exact  unquestioning 


io6  Bibles 

obedience  to  my  dictum  from  any  other  hu- 
man soul. 

And  I  am  under  the  highest  of  all  obliga- 
tions to  keep  my  own  convictions  always 
ready  for  revision  in  the  light  of  higher  and 
grander  truths  or  the  results  of  wider  human 
experience.  But,  so  long  as  I  believe  that 
a  certain  thing  is  right,  that  thing  I  must  do 
on  peril  of  being  false  to  my  God  and  to  my  soul. 

How  does  God  speak,  if  not  in  an  infallible 
way  ?  I  believe  that  God  has  spoken  to  men 
— perhaps  in  all  the  ways  to  which  I  have 
referred — sometime,  somewhere,  in  the  his- 
tory of  the  world.  I  believe  that  there  is 
many  a  word  of  God  in  the  Bible,  which  I 
never  loved  so  much,  in  which  I  never  was  so 
interested,  as  I  am  at  this  hour.  I  believe 
that  God  speaks  to  us  in  a  thousand  ways, 
from  the  heavens  over  our  head  to  the  earth 
under  our  feet, — that  He  speaks  in  the  expe- 
riences of  human  lives. 

Let  us  note  a  little  more  particularly  some 
ways  by  which  we  may  believe  that  He  sends 
His  messaores  to  us  even  in  this  later  day.. 
Men  have  believed  always  that  all  the  things 
that  they  saw^  felt,  did,  have  not  originated 
simply  in  themselves.  They  have  believed 
that  they  have  been  played  upon  like  instru- 


Bibles  107 

ments,  sometimes  by  the  ,sl<;ilful  fingers  of 
unseen  personalities.  They  have  believed 
that  all  their  thoughts  were  not  their  own, 
all  their  words  not  their  own,  all  their 
actions  not  their  own ;  and  these  have  not 
always  been  ignorant  people,  enthusiasts, 
persons  not  t;^  be  trusted. 

Take,  for  example,  a  woman  like  George 
Eliot.  She  was  a  hard-headed  woman,  if 
ever  there  was  one, — a  woman  who  exacted 
proof.  She  was  an  agnostic,  a  woman  not  to 
be  swept  by  fancy ;  and  yet  she  has  left  it  on 
record  that  she  always  had  the  feeling  that 
the  best  things  she  wrote  were  somehow 
not  entirely  her  own.  She  does  not  attempt 
to  tell  us  where  they  came  from. 

One  of  the  most  famous  preachers  of  the 
modern  world — I  have  this  on  perfectly  reliable 
authority — was  sometimes  known  practically 
to  fall  into  a  trance  after  he  had  begun  his 
sermon,  and  to  speak  without  clear  intellect- 
ual consciousness  of  what  he  was  saying.  He 
himself  has  said  that,  when  a  parishioner  came 
to  him  at  the  close  of  the  sermon  and  asked 
him  just  what  he  meant  by  this  saying  or  that, 
he  would  be  compelled  to  wait  until  after  he 
had  seen  the  report  of  his  stenographer  be- 
fore he    answered,  because  he  was  not  quite 


io8  Bibles 

sure  what  he  had  said.  And  these  were  the 
days  when  the  people  clutched  the  seats  in 
front  of  them  and  listened  with  breathless 
eagerness  to  his  words. 

All  men  who  speak  in  public,  I  take  it,  have 
times  when  they  feel  as  though  they  were 
somehow  rapt  out  of  and  above  themselves ; 
and  if  you  should  interrupt  them  in  the  midst 
of  their  discourse,  they  would  open  their  eyes, 
and  feel  as  though  they  were  dropped  sud- 
denly to  a  lower  level.  Men  who  speak  and 
men  who  write  are  sometimes  conscious  of 
being  lifted  as  if  on  wings,  into  higher  ranges 
of  atmosphere,  up  to  heights  whence  they  gain 
wider  views  of  humanity  and  the  universe. 

The  elder  Dumas  used  frequently  to  be 
found,  by  a  friend  who  called  upon  him,  sit- 
ting at  his  desk,  laughing  with  abandon  at  the 
keen  or  witty  remarks  of  some  of  his  own 
characters,  as  though  he  were  hearing  them 
and  had  nothinof  whatever  to  do  with  them 
himself,  except  to  listen.  In  all  ages  of  the 
world  there  has  been  a  class  of  men  whom  we 
call  Mystics,  who  have  felt  that  they  were  in 
touch  with  unseen  realities  about  them,  and 
that  they  voiced  wisdom  and  aspirations 
higher  than  they  were  familiar  with  in  their 
normal  hours. 


Bibles  109 

The  great  men  of  the  world  have  been  men 
who,  Hke  Jesus,  now  and  then  cHmbed  to 
mountain  tops,  and  had  their  hours  of  trans- 
figuration ;  and  then  they  came  down  into  the 
confusion  and  7Jiclde  of  ordinary  human  Hfe, 
and  appeared  Hl<:e  other  people. 

These  are  undeniable  experiences.  What 
do  they  mean  ?  I  do  not  for  one  moment 
suppose  that  the  utterances  of  people  at  these 
times  are  necessarily  infallible.  For  you 
must  remember  that,  if  a  wind-harp  be  played 
upon  by  the  breeze,  the  music  will  be  deter- 
mined, not  entirely  by  the  character  of  the 
wind,  but  by  the  range  and  capacity  and 
condition  of  the  harp  itself.  So  divine  in- 
fluences may  play  upon  the  human  mind  and 
heart ;  and  the  resulting  echo  will  be  deter- 
mined, not  entirely  by  the  divine  influence, 
but  by  the  condition  of  the  instrument  that  is 
touched  and  played  upon. 

Just  what  do  I  believe?  For  possibly  I  am 
not  making  myself  very  clear.  I  believe  that 
this  world  of  ours  is  immersed  in  a  world  in- 
visible, a  world  as  real  as  this,  infinitely  more 
real,  if  there  is  to  be  any  grade  and  degree  of 
reality  recognised.  We  have  learned  enough 
about  this  old  material  universe  of  ours  to 
know  that  the  mightiest  forces  in  it  are  the 


I  lo  Bibles 

invisible  and  intangible  forces.  Paul  talked 
about  running  his  life  race  in  an  arena,  while 
rising  about  him  tier  on  tier  was  a  great 
crowd  of  witnesses. 

I  believe  we  fight  our  battle  here  in  the 
presence  of  people  we  do  not  see.  I  believe, 
as  Milton  said,  that 

"  Millions  of  spiritual  creatures  walk  the  earth 
Unseen,  both  when  we  wake  and  when  we  sleep." 

We  play  our  part  here  on  our  little  stage, 
in  the  midst  of  a  spiritual  universe.  It  is  one 
house,  with  different  rooms  in  that  house. 

I  believe  that  now  and  then  there  come  to 
those  prepared  for  them  whispers  out  of 
this  Unseen, — touches,  voices,  glimpses,  influ- 
ences. They  are  not  infallible ;  but  they 
lift  us,  and  they  make  us  stronger,  braver, 
better.  Here  is  one  source  of  possible  inspir- 
ation, though  not  of  infallibility.  For,  if  I 
can  influence  a  friend  here,  I  may  conceiv- 
ably influence  that  friend  after  I  have  passed 
into  the  Invisible.  But,  if  I  am  not  infallible 
now,  there  is  no  reason  in  the  wide  world  why 
I  should  suppose  I  shall  be  infallible  five  min- 
utes or  five  years  after  I  have  passed  into  the 
Unseen.  Influences,  inspiration  then  possibly, 
but  not  infallibility. 


Bibles  1 1 1 

There  is  another  source  of  insph-ation, — the 
direct  influence  of  God.  What  do  I  mean  by 
that  ?  I  do  not  mean  at  all,  for  I  do  not  be- 
lieve at  all,  that  God  ever  used  any  man  since 
the  world  beo^an  as  an  amanuensis  in  the 
work  of  writing  a  book  for  Him.  I  do  not 
believe  that  God  arbitrarily  selects  this  man 
or  that  man  to  be  inspired ;  that  He  says, 
"  Now  here  is  Isaiah,  and  here  is  Paul ;  they 
two  shall  be  inspired  ;  and  Mohammed  and 
other  people  shall  not."  I  believe  nothing 
of  the  kind. 

What  do  I  believe  ?  I  believe  that  God  is 
spirit,  infinite,  universal,  and  that  we  live  and 
move  and  breathe  in  Him  ;  that  He  is  life, 
thought,  feeling,  love  ;  that  He  surrounds  our 
lives,  as  the  air  surrounds  the  world.  But  I 
believe  that  He  is  changeless,  not  arbitrary  in 
His  selection.  He  surrounds  humanity,  then, 
in  a  certain  sense,  if  I  may  suggest  something 
by  a  figure,  as  the  ocean  surrounds  its  shores. 
The  ocean  does  not  change  its  nature,  but 
it  sweeps  into  the  Bay  of  Fundy,  into  the 
Mediterranean,  up  the  mouth  of  a  river,  into 
a  little  creek  or  inlet,  according  to  the  ca- 
pacity, the  receptive  power  of  bay,  river- 
mouth,  creek,  inlet.  It  fills  every  opening 
full. 


112  Bibles 

I  believe  that  from  the  beginning  of  the 
world  God  has  been  flowing  into  humanity, — 
yea,  into  all  lives  before  there  was  any  human- 
ity,— filling  life  full  of  Himself,  just  according 
to  the  capacity  of  that  life  to  receive  Him.  God 
is  in  a  grass-blade.  How  much  of  Him  ?  All 
that  a  grass-blade  will  hold,  God  is  in  a  peb- 
ble stone.  How  much  of  Him  ?  All  that  a 
pebble  will  hold.  God  is  in  Mont  Blanc. 
How  much  ?  All  that  Mont  Blanc  can  hold 
and  manifest  of  His  majesty  and  might  and 
His  beauty  and  His  glory.  God  is  in  a  con- 
stellation. How  much  ?  All  that  a  constel- 
lation can  hold  and  reflect.  And  God  is  in 
a  horse  and  a  dog.  How  much  ?  All  that  the 
horse  or  dog  is  capable  of  receiving.  God  is 
in  the  Fiji  Islander.  How  much  ?  All  that 
a  Fiji  Islander  can  think  and  feel  and  ex- 
press. God  was  in  an  ancient  Roman  as  truly 
as  in  an  ancient  Hebrew.  How  much  ?  As 
much  as  he  could  express. 

And  so, .  as  the  world  has  climbed  up,  as 
man  has  advanced  in  intellectual,  in  moral,  in 
affectional  capacity,  in  spiritual  ability,  God 
has  come  in  and  filled  him  full.  Or,  to  put 
it  another  way,  God  has  been  the  power  that 
has  developed  and  unfolded  from  within,  ex- 
pressing Himself  just  as  fast  and  as  far  as  hu- 


Bibles  113 

manity  has  developed  into  capacity  for  divine 
expression. 

That  is  what  inspiration  means,  that  is 
what  the  coming  into  us  of  God  means.  God 
was  in  Confucius,  God  Avas  in  Gautama,  God 
was  in  Mohammed.  He  was  in  all  these 
great  men,  Readers,  witnesses  of  their  ages, 
expressing  Himself  just  as  fully  as  they  were 
capable  of  receiving  Him  and  understanding 
Him. 

Why  do  we  to-day  cling  to  the  supreme 
leadership  in  morals  and  religion  of  the  Naz- 
arene  ?  Because  here  was  a  soul  so  developed, 
so  rounded,  so  clarified,  that  God  could  put 
more  of  Himself  into  him  than  perhaps  into 
any  other  man  that  ever  lived  ;  so  that  we 
say  that  God  shines  in  the  face  of  Jesus. 
Nothing  unnatural  about  it ;  nothing  super- 
natural, any  more  than  there  is  something 
supernatural  in  a  raindrop  catching  as  much 
of  the  sun  as  it  can  hold  or  the  wide  ocean 
catching  a  million-fold  more.  So  God  in- 
spires and  comes  into  us  just  as  fast  and  as 
far  as  we  are  ready  to  receive  Him. 

And  He  speaks  to  us.     As  Whitman  says : 

"  Why  should  I  wish  to  see  God  better  than  this  day? 
I  see  something  of  God  each  hour  of  the  twenty-four, 
each  moment  then  ; 


114  Bibles 

In  the  faces  of  men  and  women  I  see  God,  and  in  my 

own  face  in  the  glass  ; 

"  I  find  letters  from  God  dropt  in  the  street — and  every 

one  is  signed  by  God's  name, 
And  I  leave  them  where  they  are,  for  I  know  that  where- 

soe'er  I  go. 
Others  will  punctually  come  forever  and  forever,", 

To  the  person  who  can  see,  God  shows  Him- 
self;  to  the  person  who  can  feel,  He  is  mani- 
fested, as  you  reach  out  and  touch  the  hem 
of  His  garment ;  to  the  one  who  can  appreciate 
beauty,  God  comes  in  all  His  beauty;  to  one 
who  can  appreciate  the  exactness  of  mathe- 
matics and  their  relation  to  the  order  of  the 
universe,  God  is  apprehended  mathematically. 
As  Kepler  said,  "  O  God,  I  think  over  again 
Thy  thoughts  after  Thee."  Not  infallible  ;  but 
he  saw  that  God  had  been  there,  and  he 
traced  His  footsteps. 

And  so  in  every  direction,  whatever  our 
peculiar  capacity  may  be,  we  see  and  feel  and 
hear  and  touch  God.  It  would  be  a  pity, 
indeed,  if  the  modern  world  were  poorer  in 
revelation  than  the  ancient.  I  do  not  know, 
whether  I  shall  shock  you  when  I  say  that 
a  large  part, of  our  Bible,  except  for  criti- 
cal and  historical  purposes,  is  not  worth  a 
great  deal  to-day.     We  have  other  books  that 


Bibles  115 

are  more  the  word  of  God  ^than  the  most  of 
Kings  and  Chronicles  and  Esther  and  Ezekiel 
and  Jeremiah  and  the  Epistles  of  Peter  and 
Jude.  Wordsworth,  Tennyson,  Browning, 
Longfellow,  Lowell,  Whittier,  Whitman,  Rus- 
kin,  Carlyle,  Emerson,  Thoreau, — a  dozen 
writers  of  the  last  century  have  larger,  higher, 
deeper,  wider  inspirations  of  God  than  half 
of  the  Bible  contains  ;  and  why  not  ? 

Has  God  been  hiding  Himself  since  two  or 
three  thousand  years  ago  ?  Has  He  had  no- 
thing to  say  to  the  modern  world  ?  Has  He 
entered  into  no  brain,  no  heart,  no  life,  since 
the  time  of  Paul  ?  What,  then,  has  Chris- 
tianity meant, — the  Christianity  which  is  the 
blossoming,  unfolding  of  a  divine  life,  ever 
growing  wider  and  finer  and  sweeter  as  the 
centuries  go  by  ?  I  believe  that  there  never 
was  a  time  since  the  old  world  swune  in  the 
blue  when  there  was  so  much  of  God  in 
humanity,  so  much  of  love,  of  tenderness,  of 
pity,  helpfulness,  care,  and  devotion,  so  much 
of  everything  divine  as  there  is  here,  this 
moment,  in  London,  in  New  York. 

This  means  an  ever-widening  revelation, 
the  evolution,  the  unfolding,  of  the  Divine 
within  the  sphere  of  the  human.  So  remem- 
ber that,  if  you  listen,  you  can  hear.     If  you 


ii6  Bibles 

do  not  hear,  never  dare  to  think  that  there  is 
not  a  voice.  If  you  reach  out  your  hand  and 
it  is  sensitive,  you  can  feel.  If  you  do  not, 
never  dare  to  say  God  is  not  there.  If  you 
love,  you  will  thrill  to  the  pulse-throb  of  the 
infinite  love.  If  hate  is  in  your  heart,  do  not 
dare  to  say  there  is  no  love  in  the  universe. 
It  is  full  of  God  :  only  listen,  only  feel,  only 
look,  only  ask  that  a  glimpse  may  be  vouch- 
safed to  you. 

Let  Lowell  tell  us  this  deep  spiritual  truth  : 

"  God  is  not  dumb,  that  He  should  speak  no  more  ; 
If  thou  hast  wanderings  in  the  wilderness 
And  find'st  not  Sinai,  't  is  thy  soul  is  poor  ; 
There  towers  the  mountain  of  the  Voice  no  less, 
Which  whoso  seeks  shall  find  ;  but  he  who  bends, 
Intent  on  manna  still  and  mortal  ends. 
Sees  it  not,  neither  hears  its  thundered  lore. 

"  Slowly  the  Bible  of  the  race  is  writ. 
And  not  on  paper  leaves  nor  leaves  of  stone  ; 
Each  age,  each  kindred,  adds  a  verse  to  it. 
Texts  of  despair  or  hope,  of  joy  or  moan. 
While  swings   the   sea,  while   mists  the   mountains 

shroud, 
While  thunder's  surges  burst  on  cliffs  of  cloud, 
Still  at  the  prophets'  feet  the  nations  sit.  " 


VI 

X   GODS  AND  GOD 

AS  the  world  grows,  idols  are  for  ever  pass- 
ing away  ;  but  God  abides,  and  becomes 
ever  more  and  more.  It  is  not  always  true 
that  idols  have  been  made  of  wood,  of  stone, 
of  some  kind  of  metal.  More  commonly  they 
have  been  made  of  thoughts,  imaginings, 
wrought  out  by  the  hands  of  ignorance  and 
fear;  and  these  have  been  the  most  hideous 
and  cruel  of  them  all. 

The  boy  who  lives  in  the  home  with  his 
father,  and  sees  him  every  day,  does  not  have, 
when  he  is  a  boy,  any  adequate,  any  complete 
idea  of  his  father.  His  conception  of  him  is 
determined,  not  by  what  the  father  is  so  much 
as  by  what  the  boy  is.  He  thinks  as  well  as 
he  can;  but  his  thinking  is  determined  by  his 
intellectual,  his  moral,  his  affectional  nature  ; 
and  the  thinking  will  change  as  the  months 
and  the  years  go  by,  though  the  father  may 
remain  substantially  the  same. 

117 


ii8  Gods  and  God 

And  the  boy  frequently  estimates  his  father 
by  something  which  the  father  cares  least 
about,  something  which  does  not  at  all  essen- 
tially touch  what  he  is  in  the  community  or 
as  a  part  of  the  great  world.  As,  for  exam- 
ple, the  boy  may  be  proud  of  his  father  chiefly 
because  he  is  tall  or  is  an  athlete — not  at  all 
appreciating  his  qualities  of  heart  or  head. 
And  not  only  do  these  thoughts  of  the  boy 
change  concerning  his  father,  but,  if  there  are 
three  or  four  or  a  half-dozen  boys  in  the  same 
family,  they  may  all  have  widely  divergent 
conceptions  of  the  same  one  father,  the  man 
whom  they  see  and  touch  and  love. 

Is  it  strange,  then,  that  the  world,  as  it  has 
grown  from  childhood  towards  a  manhood 
not  even  yet  attained,  should  have  divergent, 
contradictory  conceptions  concerning  the  one 
Father  in  heaven,  whom,  in  one  sense,  no  man 
hath  seen  or  can  see  ?  Is  it  strange  that  dif- 
ferent nations,  differently  born,  trained,  sur- 
rounded, leading  different  kinds  of  lives, 
should  have  differing  ideals  of  the  Divine  ? 
And  is  it  strange  that,  as  the  world  grows, 
the  old  conceptions  of  God  are  outgrown  and 
left  behind?  .Would  we  have  it  otherwise 
if  we  could  ? 

We  need  to  run  over  for  a  moment  what 


Gods  and  God  119 

all  intelligent  people  are,  in  the  main,  very 
familiar  with, — some  of  the  steps  of  the 
world's  orrowth  in  its  thousfht  concernincr  God. 

At  the  beginning,  or  as  near  the  beginning 
as  we  are  able  to  penetrate  by  our  studies, 
polytheism  existed  all  over  the  face  of  the 
earth,  of  necessity,  There  was  no  possibility 
of  anything  hke  monotheism  in  that  stage  of 
human  culture.  As  men  looked  abroad  over 
what  they  knew  of  the  heavens  and  the  earth, 
they  had  no  conception,  and  at  that  time 
could  have  had  no  conception,  of  any  unity  in 
it  at  all.  And  they  had  no  conception,  and 
could  have  had  no  conception,  of  any  force 
except  such  as  they  were  conscious  of, — will 
force.  So  that  the  powers  manifested  in  the 
heavens  above  and  on  the  earth  around  them 
seemed  to  them  separate  individualities,  and 
seemed  to  them  alive. 

Why  not  ?  How  could  it  have  been  other- 
wise ?  We  need  not  stop  to  note  at  any  length 
a  discussion  still  going  on  as  to  whether  early 
man's  belief  in  the  gods  sprang  from  ghost 
worship,  ancestor  worship,  or  whether  man, 
apart  from  this,  exercised  his  power  of  person- 
ifying natural  objects  and  forces,  and  thinking 
them  living  and  distinct  beings.  It  may  be 
there  is   a  measure   of  truth   in    both    these 


I20  Gods  and  God 

theories.  At  any  rate,  It  is  not  specially  import- 
ant for  us ;  and  we  may  leave  it  to  be  settled 
by  the  persons  engaged  in  research  in  that 
department  of  human  study. 

At  any  rate  man  believed  in  a  multiplicity 
of  gods ;  the  sun,  the  moon,  the  stars,  the 
winds,  the  clouds,  the  lightning,  the  mountains, 
the  rivers,  the  brooks, — all  these  different 
manifestations  of  what  we  think  of  to-day  as 
the  one  life  were  then  so  many  distinct  living 
individuals.  Or,  if  you  choose  to  put  it  an- 
other way,  there  were  distinct,  individual 
spirits  in  all  these. 

There  was  no  difficulty  at  that  time  in  the 
history  of  the  world  in  accounting  for  either 
good  or  evil.  The  things  that  people  liked, 
and  which,  therefore,  they  thought  of  as  good, 
were  the  result  of  the  activities  of  the  friendly 
— and,  therefore,  good — deities.  The  things 
which  they  did  not  like,  which  hurt,  which 
produced  unhappiness,  they  thought  of  as  the 
result  of  the  hostility  of  evil  deities, — deities, 
at  any  rate,  hostile  in  their  attitude  towards 
them. 

But  by  and  by  this  stage  of  thought — not 
being  in  its  nature  permanent,  because  it  was 
not  true — began  to  pass  away  ;  and  men  in 
certain  parts  of  the  world  became  henotheists. 


Gods  and  God  121 

— that  is,  they  believed  still  in  many  gods, 
but  believed  that  they  must  worship  one  god, 
their  god.  The  Jews,  for  example,  worshipped 
Jehovah.  They  did  not  doubt  the  existence 
of  Dagon,  the  god  of  the  Philistines ;  but 
they  must  worship  and  be  loyal  to  their  god. 
Just  as  to-day  a  German  in  Europe  does  not 
doubt  the  existence  of  the  czar  or  of  King 
Edward  VII.,  of  the  king  of  Italy  or  of  Aus- 
tria ;  but  he  must  be  loyal  to  the  kaiser.  The 
kaiser  is  his  king  or  emperor. 

This  was  the  state  of  thought  in  regard  to 
the  unseen  powers  that  were  supposed  to 
govern  the  world.  But  by  and  by  another 
step  in  advance  was  taken  ;  and  we  find  some 
of  the  old  prophets  declaring  with  emphasis 
that  there  is  only  one  living  and  real  God, 
and  that  all  the  gods  of  the  nations  are  idols, 
created  either  out  of  thoughts  or  some  ma- 
terial. 

But,  when  this  stage  of  growth  was  reached, 
it  was  only  on  the  part  of  the  Jews,  of  the 
Arabians,  of  a  few  people  ;  and  the  classic 
nations  of  antiquity  still  believed  in  a  multi- 
plicity of  deities  or  they  believed  in  none  at  all. 
For  Greece  and  Rome  at  last  came  to  this 
point :  the  gods  were  outgrown,  and  no  new 
ones  came  to  take  their  places.     Intellectually, 


122  Gods  and  God 

Csesar  could  not  believe  in  Jupiter  and  the 
gods  of  the  poets.  He  was  too  wise,  too  sen- 
sible a  man.  Cicero  could  not.  Socrates 
could  not  believe  in  the  gods  of  Greece.  So 
they  became,  according  to  the  popular  ideals 
of  the  time,  atheists  ;  and  they  had  to  be,  be- 
cause they  were  sensible  and  thoughtful. 

Not  only  that,  but  they  outgrew  the  gods 
morally.  The  time  came  when  in  Greece  and 
Rome  the  average  citizen  of  Athens  or  of 
Rome  was  better  than  the  gods.  They  could 
not  believe  in  them ;  they  could  not  worship 
such  ideals. 

What  was  the  result  ?  We  find  Lucretius, 
just  before  the  birth  of  Christ,  the  philosophi- 
cal poet,  trying  to  get  along  in  the  universe 
without  any  god,  trying  to  frame  a  theory  of 
things  that  did  not  need  any  god.  This  is  a 
stage  of  human  growth,  I  suppose,  that  almost 
every  great,  thoughtful  nation  has  passed 
through.  And  you  will  note  how  necessary  it 
is.  The  old  conceptions  of  the  gods  are  conse- 
crated in  the  popular  religion,  and  it  is  irrelig- 
ious and  atheistic  to  doubt  them  ;  and  yet  men 
become  too  wise  and  too  good  to  believe  in 
them  any  longer.  And  so  this  conflict  arises. 
And,  until  the  old  gods  are  superseded  by 
better,  there  is  a  period  of  interregnum,  when 


Gods  and  God  123 

there  is  no  god  at  all  for  the  clear-sighted, 
earnest,  honest  man. 

The  Jews  were  monotheists.  From  them 
we  inherited  our  Christian  monotheism  ;  and, 
as  we  have  already  seen,  having  adopted  the 
old  Hebrew  Scriptures  as  an  infallible  revela- 
tion from  Gq,d,  there  is  no  science  in  early 
Christianity.  For  a  thousand  years  we  ac- 
cepted substantially  the  Old  Testament  mono- 
theism, wrought  over  as  the  result  of  Greek 
speculation  into  the  Christian  Trinity.  They 
told  us  that  it  did  not  destroy  the  monothe- 
ism, this  making  a  Trinity  out  of  the  nature 
of  God  ;  and  they  tried  hard  in  their  definitions 
to  avoid  trithelsm. 

But  the  time  came  when  the  intellectual 
advance  of  man  outo-rew  the  Christian  con- 
ception  of  God  that  had  been  dominant  during 
the  first  thousand  )'ears  of  Christian  history. 
For  we  must  remember  that  the  thought  of 
God  o^oes  along-  with  the  thought  of  the 
universe.  God  to  the  Christians  of  the  first 
millennium  was  not  at  all  the  God  that  we 
have  in  our  minds  to-day.  He  was  an  out- 
lined, individualised  being,  sitting  on  a  throne 
in  a  heaven  just  a  little  way  above  the  blue. 
He  could  be  found  and  seen  with  such  eyes 
as  we  possess  if  we  could  only  attain  to  that 


124  Gods  and  God 

heaven.  The  universe  was  small  and  con- 
tracted as  compared  with  our  modern  concep- 
tion of  it.  God  ruled  the  world  arbitrarily. 
He  was  not  in  the  universe  in  the  sense  in 
which  we  think  of  Him  to-day. 

But  by  and  by,  at  the  time  of  the  Renais- 
sance, other  thoughts  were  born,  new  concep- 
tions of  the  universe  began  to  take  possession 
of  the  human  mind.  New  conceptions  of 
God  of  necessity  followed  these  new  concep- 
tions of  the  universe,  and  men  began  to 
occupy  the  position  in  modern  times  that 
Lucretius  did  in  ancient  Rome.  Atheism,  or 
at  least  agnosticism,  came  to  be  popular  on 
the  part  of  some  of  the  clearest-headed  think- 
ers of  the  world. 

Why?  Is  it  strange?  The  old  conception 
of  the  universe  had  been  outgrown  ;  and  yet 
it  was  consecrated  as  a  part  of  the  religion. 
The  intellectual  conception  of  God  had 
been  outgrpwn  ;  and  yet  it  was  consecrated 
as  a  part  of- the  religion.  Not  only  the  intel- 
lectual thoug-ht  of  the  universe,  and  of  God  : 
man  morally  outgrew  his  God.  So  that  the- 
people  who  revolted  at  the  time  of  the 
Renaissance  .were  not  only  clearer-headed 
than  those  who  had  thought  out  the  old 
conceptions,    but    they    were    nobler-hearted ; 


Gods  and  God  125 

and  they  could  not  worship  the  conception 
of  God  which  was  embodied  and  enshrined  in 
all  the  creeds,  and  set  up  as  the  object  of 
adoration  over  all  the  altars.  And  so  for  a 
time  many  of  the  nobler  spirits  of  the  world 
passed  through  a  phase  of  unbelief,  many  of 
them  dying  in  that  unbelief,  because  they 
could  not  clearly  see  their  way  to  any  higher 
or  finer  conception  of  things. 

So  in  the  modern  world.  We  have  had  at- 
tempts, many  on  the  part  of  noble  men,  to 
frame  a  conception  of  the  universe  that  re- 
quires no  god.  Men  have  said,  speaking  as 
scientists  :  "  God  is  an  unnecessary  hypothe- 
sis :  we  can  get  along  in  our  theories  without 
Him."  But,  though  for  a  time  the  head  may 
get  along  without  any  god,  the  heart  finds  it 
more  difficult :  it  does  not  rest  content  in 
unbelief  ;  it  cannot  look  abroad  over  the  wide 
spaces  of  the  universe  and  contentedly  feel  that 
all  is  blank  and  empty  air.  Being  appalled, 
it  longs  for  a  father,  some  one  to  trust,  some 
one  to  love. 

Let  us  frankly  admit  that  it  is  just  as  easy 
to  imagine  the  material  universe  self-existent 
and  eternal  as  it  is  to  imagine  God  self-ex- 
istent and  eternal.  The  difficulty  is  not 
there.     The  problem  arises  when  we  look  this 


126  Gods  and  God 

universe  in  the  face,  and  try  to  find  its  essential 
meaning.  And  I  believe  that,  as  the  result 
of  the  deepest  search  and  scrutiny,  we  are 
coming  to  find  more  and  more  that  the  mean- 
ing of  it  is  divine. 

Let  me  ask  you  to  think  for  a  moment. 
Suppose  we  wake  up  as  for  the  first  time,  and 
look  abroad  over  the  earth  and  into  the 
heavens.  If  the  knowledge  that  has  come 
to  the  modern  world  could  be  ours,  we  should 
find  what  ?  First,  that  here  is  not  only  my- 
self, but  here  is  a  power  not  myself,  outside 
of  myself,  a  power  that  was  here  before  I  was 
born,  a  power  that  will  be  here  after  I  have 
died,  a  power  that  has  produced  me, — there- 
fore, my  Father,  on  any  theory  I  choose 
to  hold  of  it  or  Him.  Here,  then,  first,  is  a 
power,  a  power  unlimited,  so  far  as  we  can 
imagine  or  dream.     It  is  practically  omnipotent. 

What  else?  This  power  manifests  itself 
as  a  universal  order.  There  is  no  chaos. 
Neither  the*  microscope  nor  the  telescope  has 
yet  been  able  to  find  any  part  of  the  universe 
that  is  in  disorder.     Order  everywhere. 

What  next  ?  Intellicrence.  For  we  cannot 
imagine  that  which  is  intelligible  to  be  other 
than  the  manifestation  of  intelligence. 

What  next  ?     Is  this  power  personal, — that 


Gods  and  God  127 

is,  the  power  outside  of  us  ?,  It  is,  at  least, 
by  the  most  rigid  scientific  reasoning,  as 
much  as  a  person.  I  am  a  person.  You  are 
a  person.  Millions  of  personalities  exist ;  and 
there  cannot  be  evolved  anything  which  was 
not  at  first  involved.  A  stream  cannot  rise 
higrher  than  its  source.  The  cause  must 
at  least  be  equal  to  and  adequate  to  the  re- 
sult. That  which  has  produced  and  which 
manifests  itself  in  personalities  must  be  at 
least  as  much  as  personal. 

Is  this  power  conscious  ?  We  are  con- 
scious. That  which  has  produced  us  must 
be  then  as  much  as  conscious.  As  Herbert 
Spencer  said  to  me  one  day  in  conversation 
on  this  matter,  "  There  is  no  reason  why  we 
should  not  think  of  the  Eternal  Power  as 
being  as  much  above  and  beyond  what  we 
mean  by  personality  and  consciousness  as  we 
are  above  and  beyond  vegetable  growths." 
This  is  not,  as  you  see,  a  negative,  but  a 
grandly  positive  statement.  This  Eternal 
Power  may  be  above  and  beyond  what  we 
mean  by  personality  and  consciousness  ;  that 
is,  personal  and  conscious  in  some  grander 
way  than  we  can  now  or  as  yet  imagine. 

Is  this  power  good  ?  Did  you  ever  stop 
to  think  of  one  thing  ?     There  is  no  necessary, 


128  Gods  and  God 

no  essential  evil  in  all  the  world.  There  are 
only  two  ways  by  which  evil  was  ever  wrought, 
or  ever  can  be  wrought.  Evil  is  either  the 
perverted  use  of  some  power  which  is  in  itself 
good,  or  it  is  the  excessive  use  of  some  power 
v/hich  in  itself  is  good.  There  is  no  conceiv- 
able way  of  working  evil,  except  by  one  of 
these  two ;  and  this  means  that  the  things, 
the  persons,  which  do  evil  are  not  essentially 
evil.  So  there  is  no  essential  evil  in  the  uni- 
verse ;  and  that  means  that  at  the  heart  of  it 
the  universe  is  good. 

I  had  occasion  in  a  previous  chapter  to 
make  a  statement  which  I  wish  to  recall  to 
you, — that,  analysing  it  with  care  and  in  the 
light  of  what  science  has  taught  us  of  the 
nature  of  things,  necessary  pain  is  good,  not 
evil.  What  we  call  evil,  as  I  have  just  said, 
does  not  really  exist  as  an  entity.  Sor- 
row, separation,  those  things  that  trouble  us 
here,  even  death  itself  are  not  essentially,  not 
necessarily,  evil  at  all.  It  is  very  easy  to 
prove,  I  think,  that  this  is  the  best  conceiv- 
able of  all  worlds.  Ignorance  is  only  the 
natural  and  necessary  process  through  which 
we  pass  in  becoming  learned.  Evil  is  only 
the  natural  and  necessary  stage  through  which 
we   pass   in  coming   into    conscious   personal 


Gods  and  God  129 

goodness.  Pain  and  sorrowi  are  bound  up 
of  necessit}^  with  the  Hves  of  sentient  beings, 
— are  no  permanent,  no  eternal  part  of  things. 

So,  I  beHeve,  we  are  ready  to  say,  on  the 
basis  of  the  clearest  thouorht  and  the  most 
cogent  scientific  reasoning,  that  this  power 
outside  of  ourselves  is  not  only  power,  but 
personality,  intelligence,  consciousness,  good- 
ness, and  love. 

Is  it  one  power?  Herbert  Spencer  again 
has  said — I  speak  of  him  simply  because  he 
is  as  competent  a  spokesman  for  modern  sci- 
ence as  any  man  living — that  the  existence 
of  an  Eternal  Power  back  of  all  phenomena 
is  the  one  most  certain  item  of  all  our  know- 
ledge. If  we  do  not  know  anything  else,  we 
know  this, — that  there  is  an  Eternal  Power 
back  of  all  that  is  manifested,  and  that  this 
power  is  that  in  which  all  the  divergent  man- 
ifestations  of   the    universe   find   their  unity. 

Modern  science  has  proved  that  all  the 
forces  of  the  world  are  only  varieties  and 
manifestations  of  one  force.  Now,  then,  are 
we  not  ready  to  say  we  believe,  and  we  have 
a  right  to  believe,  in  God,  and  that  God  is 
love?  By  this  I  would  not  have  you  think 
of  God  as  an  outlined  being  away  off  some- 
where  on    some    distant    planet   or   world,  a 


130  Gods  and  God 

being  that  we  could  get  nearer  to  than  we  are 
already  if  we  could  only  travel  fast  enough  or 
in  the  right  direction.  For  this  thought  of 
God  is  one  of  the  idols  which  is  destined  of 
necessity  to  pass  away. 

Where  is  God  ?  They  used  to  think  of 
Him  as  just  above  the  blue  dome;  but  that 
blue  dome  has  faded  into  space,  as  the  result 
of  modern  investigation.  The  nearest  star 
to  us  after  we  leave  our  solar  system  is  so  far 
away  that  it  takes  light  between  three  and  four 
years  to  come  to  us  from  it :  that  is  our  next- 
door  neighbour.  The  next  one,  I  think,  is  so  far 
away  that  it  takes  six  or  seven  years.  Where 
shall  we  look  for  the  centre  of  the  universe 
on  which  to  erect  the  throne  of  God  ?  If  we 
seek  for  the  centre  of  a  universe  that  seems 
to  us,  so  far  as  we  know,  infinite  in  extent, 
we  must  put  God  in  that  sense  so  far  away 
that  we  should  be  practically  lost  in  the  deeps 
of  space. 

Where  is  God  ?  God  is  nearer  to  us  than 
He  ever  was  in  all  the  thought  of  the  world 
before.  God  is  here,  always  here,  always  all 
here.  Does  that  seem  incomprehensible  mys- 
tery ?  Let  me,  in  the  use  of  an  illustration 
which  I  may  have  used  before,  try  to  suggest 
that  it  is  no  more  mysterious  than  anything 


Gods  and  God  131 

else  is  mysterious.  We  sometimes  delude 
ourselves  by  imagining  that,  when  we  have 
labelled  a  thino;  which  we  have  seen  a  great 
many  times,  we  know  it,  and  have  divested  it 
of  its  mystery.  We  have  seen  flowers,  grass- 
blades,  and  pebble-stones  ever  since  we  were 
children.  Can  you  explain  either  one  of  them 
for  me  ?  Whichever  one  you  look  at,  if  you 
ask  a  few  questions  about  it  and  try  to  trace 
its  meaning,  you  find  yourself  face  to  face 
with  the  Infinite  ;  as  Tennyson  has  expressed 
it  in  that  beautiful  little  fragment  of  his  about 
the  "  Flower  in  the  Crannied  Wall."  Explain 
that  to  me,  and  I  will  explain  to  you  what 
God  is,  what  man  is. 

Let  us  take,  then,  a  familiar  illustration,  that 
I  may  suggest  to  you  that  the  mystery  of  God's 
omnipresence  is  not  more  mysterious  than 
something  we  are  daily  familiar  with.  Where 
are  you  ?  Did  anybody  ever  see  you  ?  You 
are  not  your  body.  What  has  anybody  seen 
when  he  has  looked  at  you  ?  Seen  a  face, 
clothes,  certain  outlines  of  a  figure  ;  but,  if  he 
had  seen  the  whole  body,  would  he  have 
seen  you  ?  You  are  not  the  bod}^  You  in- 
habit the  body  for  a  time  ;  you  wear  it,  you 
use  it ;  but  you  are  something  else  than  the 
body. 


132  Gods  and  God 

Where  are  you  ?  In  the  body,  you  say. 
Though  this  mysterious  something  we  call  our 
thought  can  circle  the  earth  quicker  than  the 
electric  forces  can  do  it,  and  commune  with 
the  stars  at  the  same  time  that  it  is  here.  But 
where  are  you  ?  Did  anybody  ever  see  you  ? 
No.  Nobody  ever  will  see  you  ;  you  are  as 
invisible  as  God  is.  In  what  part  of  your 
body  are  you  ?  You  are  omnipresent  in  your 
body  as  much  as  God  is  omnipresent  in  the 
universe.  When  you  are  looking,  for  all  prac- 
tical purposes  you  are  in  the  eyes  ;  when  you 
are  clasping  the  hand  of  a  friend,  you  are  in 
that  hand-clasp ;  when  you  are  running  on 
some  errand  of  mercy  or  business,  you  are,  for 
all  practical  purposes,  in  the  feet.  You  are 
wherever  a  special  activity  of  your  person- 
ality is  called  for.  When  you  speak,  you  are 
in  this  invisible  air,  being  shaped  to  words 
on  the  tip  of  your  tongue  and  by  your  teeth. 
You  are  omnipresent  in  your  body ;  you  are 
invisible. 

Let  that  figure  of  speech  suggest  to  us  a 
mystery  indeed,  but  no  profounder  mystery, 
concerninsj  God.  The  modern  thought  of  God 
is  that  He  is  in  and  through  the  universe,  which 
is  no  longer  a  mechanism,  but  has  become  an 
organism.      The  universe  was    not  made :  it 


Gods  and  God  133 

grew,  just  as  you  were  not  xiiade,  but  grew ; 
and  God  is  the  mind,  the  heart,  the  Hfe,  the 
love  that  makes  the  universe  the  body  of  the 
Hving  divinity. 

God,  then,  is  omnipresent.  He  is  in  the 
flower  when  that  flower  is  unfolding.  He  is 
in  a  nebula  wjien  it  is  cohering  to  an  orb  and 
is  in  the  process  of  creating  a  sun.  He  is 
wherever  there  is  activity  going  on  ;  and  all  of 
Him  that  is  needed  is  wherever  the  special 
activity  is  going  on.  And  as  we  know,  from 
the  farthest  electric  throb  of  the  most  distant 
star  to  the  tiniest  movement  of  a  grain  of  sand 
in  the  street,  that  all  is  thrilling  and  moving 
with  tireless  and  eternal  life,  so  we  know  that 
God  is  everywhere,  is  omnipresent.  Thus  this 
great,  this  overwhelming  conception,  is  becom- 
ing real  to  the  modern  world,  is  being  seen  to 
be  rational,  something  we  can  gain  at  least  a 
glimpse  of  and  partly  comprehend. 

This,  then,  is  our  modern  thought  of  God  ; 
and  the  old  ideas  concerning  Him  are  passing 
away.  I  wish  to  suggest  to  you  now  that  this 
process  of  passing  away  is  all  round  us,  in  all 
the  churches,  and  is  as  yet  very  far  from  being 
complete.  In  one  sense, — and,  I  beg  you  to 
understand  the  sense  in  which  I  mean  it, — we 
do  not  to-day  worship  the  God  of  Abraham,  of 


134  Gods  and  God 

Isaac,  or  of  Jacob.  We  do  not  worship  the 
God  of  Samuel  or  of  Elijah,  or  of  any  of  the 
prophets.  We  do  not  worship  the  God  of 
Paul.  We  do  not  worship  the  God  of  Leo  X. 
or  of  Pope  Sixtus  IV.,  after  whom  the  Sistine 
Chapel  was  named.  We  do  not  worship  the 
God  of  the  reformers,  Luther  or  Calvin.  We 
do  not  worship  the  God  of  Whitefield,  or  of 
Wesley,  or  of  Edwards,  or  of  Finney,  or  of 
Moody. 

Note,  I  believe  that  all  these  men, — and 
truer,  nobler,  souls  than  some  of  them,  in  spite 
of  certain  things  I  am  going  to  say,  have  never 
lived  on  the  face  of  the  earth, — these  men  saw 
God  the  best  they  knew.  And  in  one  sense, 
in  the  real  and  true  sense,  they  were  feeling 
after  the  real  God  as  much  as  are  we  ;  but 
they  suffered  the  limitations  of  their  time,  their 
traditions,  and  their  training, — the  intellectual 
limitations,  the  moral  limitations, — and  they 
could  not  think  clearly  and  nobly  of  Him  who 
is  the  God  and  Father  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ.  The  God  of  the  Methodist  Book  of 
Discipline,  the  God  of  the  Presbyterian  Con- 
fession of  Faith,  the  God  of  most  of  the  old 
creeds,  the  God  of  the  Episcopal  Prayer-book, 
the  intellectual  conception  of  God,  I  mean, 
which  is  outlined  in  these,  is  not  the  God  that 


Gods  and  God  135 

the  best  men  and  women,  even  in  those  churches 
to-day,  are  worshipping. 

Just  as  the  old  conception  of  the  universe 
has  been  outgrown  and  is  passing  away,  so  the 
old  intellectual  conceptions  of  God  are  being 
intellectually  outgrown,  and  are  passing  away. 
We  do  not  think  of  Him  any  more  under  the 
concepts  that  we  used  to  hold. 

But  not  only  that :  we  are  outgrowing  the 
elder  ideals  morally.  I  said  above  that  the 
average  citizen  of  ancient  Athens  and  ancient 
Rome  was  better  than  the  gods  whose  worship 
he  had  inherited.  So  I  say  now,  simply,  di- 
rectly, deliberately,  that  the  average  man  in 
New  York  to-day  is  better  than  the  conception 
of  God,  as  outlined  by  either  of  the  great  men 
to  whom  I  have  referred.  The  God  of  the 
great  creeds  is  morally  outgrown.  They  said 
He  w^as  good,  but  He  was  not.  For,  as  they 
went  on  to  define  Him,  they  contradicted  the 
assertion  of  the  goodness,  and  inserted  into 
their  creeds  statements  about  Him  which  the 
hearts  of  His  children  are  comino-  to  reofard  as 
libels  and  to  protest  against  for  the  sake  of  the 
love  and  honour  that  are  borne  Him. 

When  in  early  Christianity  they  deified  Je- 
sus, in  one  sense  they  did  something  sweeter 
and  finer  than  they  knew ;  for  what  has  been 


136  Gods  and  God 

the  result  of  it  ?  There  was  a  movement  for 
a  time,  and  it  partially  succeeded,  to  make 
over  the  noble,  sweet,  tender  Nazarene  into 
the  repulsive  image  of  the  God  they  wor- 
shipped and  whom  they  referred  to  as  his 
Father.  But  the  result  of  it  has  been  that  Je- 
sus, the  tender,  loving,  gentle  Nazarene,  has 
transformed  and  made  over  the  conception  of 
the  God.  And  men  have  come  to  feel  and  to 
say,  God  must  be,  at  least,  as  good  as  Jesus  was. 

The  Jehovah  of  the  Old  Testament  was  not 
as  good  :  he  was  jealous ;  he  was  partial ;  he 
was  cruel ;  he  indorsed  all  sorts  of  thingrs  that 
we  morally  repudiate  and  hate  to-day.  The 
God  of  Elijah,  the  God  of  Paul,  was  not  as 
good  as  Jesus.  The  God  of  Pope  Leo  X.,  the 
God  of  Luther  and  Calvin,  was  not  as  good. 
The  God  of  Moody  and  the  great  modern  re- 
vivalists was  not  nearly  as  good  as  Jesus. 

Run  over  in  your  mind  the  ideal  of  Jesus, — 
the  gentle,  the  tender,  forgiving  his  enemies, 
saying,  "They  know  not  what  they  do"  ;  tol- 
erant of  the  ignorant  and  weak ;  eating  with 
publicans  and  sinners  ;  forgiving  the  woman 
who  had  gone  astray,  and  telling  those  who 
were  without  sin  to  cast  the  first  stone.  He 
was  ideal  in  his  sweetness  and  his  love,  and 
yet  unflinching  in  his  adhesion  to  the  truth. 


Gods  and  God  137 

This  was  the  historic  reaHty  of  Jesus.  But,  as 
the  years  went  by,  they  triecT  to  make  of  him 
a  judge,  and  to  represent  him  as  casting  all 
his  enemies  into  an  eternal  hell.  But  from 
before  his  orentle  face  all  those  barbaric  hor- 
rors  are  fleeing  away,  as  the  clouds  and  the 
mists  flee  at  the  coming  up  of  the  sun. 

So  Jesus,  tite  tender,  ideal,  perfect  humanity, 
is  coming  to  give  us  our  conception  of  God. 
We  must  think  of  God,  if  He  is  worthy  of  our 
worship  at.  all,  as  being  utterly  flawless.  He 
must  be  perfect,  or  we  cannot  believe  in  Him. 
So  He  is  coming  to  be,  at  last,  all  these  things 
which  we  can  dream.  The  old  partial  concep- 
tions of  Him  are  passing  away  ;  they  are  being 
quietly  laid  one  side,  so  far  as  practical  use  is 
concerned,  even  though  they  still  remain  im- 
bedded, like  old-time  fossils,  in  the  creeds.  So 
God  is  coming  to  be  perfect,  to  be  love.  The 
divided  universe,  half  of  which  belonged  to  the 
devil,  we  can  no  longer  tolerate.  As  Tenny- 
son says : 

"The  God  of  love  and  of  hell  together  —  He  cannot  be 
thought ! 
If  there  be  such  a  god,  may  the  great  God  curse  him 
and  bring  him  to  naught." 

Now,  then,  as  we  go  out  over  the  world,  en- 
gaged in  our  business  or  our  pleasure,  we  are 


138  Gods  and  God 

not  orphans,  we  are  not  alone.  Our  God  is 
not  even  away  off  somewhere  in  space  :  He  is 
here.  It  was  God  who  held  the  worlds  in 
their  orbits  last  night  while  we  slept.  It  was 
God  who  turned  our  old  planet  until  by  and 
by  the  part  of  it  where  we  were  came  into  the 
light  of  the  morning  sun ;  and  it  was  dawn. 
It  was  God  who  waked  us  out  of  our  sleep  ;  it 
was  God  whose  loving  and  universal  care  fed 
us ;  it  was  God  who  was  watching  us,  who 
folded  us  in  His  arms  and  guarded  us. 

And  now,  as  we  turn  and  go  about  our  oc- 
cupations, no  matter  what  business  we  are  en- 
gaged in,  it  is  God's  power  we  are  using  to 
carry  that  business  on, —  God  in  our  minds, 
bodies,  hearts,  consciousnesses,  leading  us  in 
the  ways  that  are  right ;  God  moving  our 
machinery  for  us,  whether  it  is  electricity, 
steam,  or  water  power.  Whatever  it  is,  it  is 
the  manifestation  of  the  tireless  life  and  force 
of  God,  our  Father.  If  there  is  any  beauty, 
of  a  flower,,  in  a  child's  face,  wonder  in  the 
eyes  of  some  one  we  love,  there  is  God.  Wher- 
ever there  is  light,  it  is  God,  the  power ;  wher-. 
ever  there  is  order,  it  is  God,  the  law  ;  wherever 
there  is  majesty,  as  in  the  mountains,  it  is  God, 
thrilling  and  lifting  us  ;  God  in  the  infinite 
variety,  the  rhythm,  and  movement,  the  tire- 


Gods  and  God  139 

less  uplift  and  sink  of  the  sea^;  God  in  the  air, 
cooling,  disinfecting,  cleansing,  healing, — God 
everywhere. 

Duty,  truth,  love,  power,  care,  helpfulness, 
pity,  inspiration,  aspiration, — "  in  Him  we  live 
and  move  and  have  our  being."  The  world  is 
no  longer  secular  for  six  days  and  sacred  the 
seventh.  If  we  understand  it,  it  is  all  sacred. 
We  are  always  in  the  presence  of  God,  and, 
wherever  we  are,  we  may  kneel  and  be  in  the 
innermost  sanctuary  of  His  temple.  God  is 
our  Father,  and  God  is  love. 


VII 

SAVIOURS 

A  LL  nations,  all  religions,  have  had  their 
■*»■  saviours.  But  as  we  study  them,  we  find 
that  the  beliefs  concerning  what  men  need  to 
be  saved  from,  and  how  this  salvation  is  to  be 
accomplished,  have  been  widely  divergent. 
We  find  still  further  that,  even  in  the  same 
religion  concerning  the  same  supposed  sav- 
iour, the  same  ideal  has  not  continued.  The 
thought  of  the  people  has  changed  concerning 
the  nature,  the  office,  the  work  of  the  saviour, 
in  accordance  with  the  intellectual,  moral,  and 
spiritual  development  of  the  people.  We  shall 
find  this  point  clearly  illustrated  when  a  little 
later  we  come  to  consider  what  people  have 
believed  concerning  Jesus. 

From   the  beginning  of  the  world,  as  men. 
have  looked   over  human   life,  the   evils   that 
afflict    us    have  been   patent  and  observable. 
Men  have  suffered  from  physical  pain  ;  they 
have  had  mental  sorrows.     There  have  been 

140 


Saviours  141 

hunger  and  want  of  every  kind, — disease,  vice, 
crime,  death.  These  have  always  existed ; 
and  men  have  always  of  necessity  had  some 
theory  in  the  light  of  which  they  have  tried 
to  account  for  them. 

It  is  inevitable  that  men  should  have  asked  : 
"  Why  do  I  suffer?  Why  do  pain  and  sorrow 
and  moral  eviT,  want  and  vice  and  crime,  ex- 
ist ? "  And,  when  we  consider  the  mental 
condition  of  early  men,  the  answer  which  they 
gave  to  their  own  questions  was  the  most  nat- 
ural one  in  the  world  ;  and  yet  it  was  a  magi- 
cal, a  supernatural  answer.  Men  believed,  and 
they  could  not  have  believed  otherwise,  that 
they  were  surrounded  on  every  hand  by  invisi- 
ble beings  who  were  able  to  help  or  hurt  them 
as  they  pleased.  And  they  have  supposed 
that  these  beings  were  some  of  them  friendly, 
some  of  them  hostile,  some  of  them  perhaps 
fickle  and  changeable,  now  on  good  terms  with 
them  and  now  opposed,  according  to  condi- 
tions. And  they  have  believed  that  all  these 
evils  were  brought  upon  them  by  these  invisible 
powers. 

A  study  of  early  man,  for  example,  shows  us 
what  we  should  not  have  supposed  before  that 
study, — that  death  itself  even  has  never  been 
regarded  as  a  natural  thing.     It  has  been  hard 


142  Saviours 

for  men  to  believe  that  they  must  die.  And, 
when  a  man  has  died,  instead  of  supposing  that 
it  was  the  necessary  result  of  some  inevitable, 
natural  cause,  they  have  always  believed  that 
some  enemy  has  killed  him.  If  that  enemy 
was  not  visible,  then  invisible, — some  spiritual 
being-.  This  in  illustration  of  the  universal  fact 
that  they  have  attributed  the  existence  of  all 
these  evils  to  hostile  spirits  in  the  Unseen. 

Now  you  will  readily  see  that  the  method 
by  which  they  would  attempt  to  be  free  from 
these  evils  would  naturally  be  determined  by 
their  theory  as  to  the  cause  of  them.  They 
were  caused  by  the  enmity  of  invisible  beings. 
The  thing  to  do  then,  of  course,  is  to  win  the 
friendship,  the  good-will,  of  these  invisible 
people. 

No  other  method  would  even  occur  to  them ; 
for  they  knew  nothing  of  what  we  mean  by 
nature,  natural  forces,  natural  laws.  How, 
then,  would  they  proceed  ?  Naturally,  they 
would  proceed  as  we  know  they  did.  They 
attempted  to  bring  to  these  invisible  beings 
such  offerings  as  they  supposed  they  would 
desire,  that  they  might  win  their  regard.  And 
the  first  great  want  of  man — pressing  upon 
him  with  a  force  in  those  early  times  that  it  is 
impossible  for  us  now   to  conceive — was  the 


Saviours  143 

satisfaction  of  hunger.  And  we  know  that 
they  beheved  that  these  invisible  spirits  needed 
food.  They  ate  the  spiritual  counterpart  of 
the  visible  thing-  which  was  the  supply  of  their 
own  needs.  And  so  modern  research  has  re- 
vealed to  us — what  has  been  known  but  for  a 
little  while — that  the  earliest  idea  of  sacrifice 
was  that  of  a  common  meal  partaken  of  by  the 
god  and  his  worshippers  together.  They 
brought  some  animal,  sacrificed  it,  poured  out 
the  blood  upon  the  altar  ;  and  it  was  believed 
that  the  god  communed  with  them  as  a  par- 
taker in  this  common  meal. 

And  just  as  you  find  among  the  Arabs,  for 
example,  to-day,  that,  if  they  have  eaten  with 
even  an  enemy,  they  feel  held  in  bonds  of  amity 
for  at  least  a  time,  so  it  was  supposed  by  these 
early  ancestors  of  ours  that  when  they  ate  with 
the  god,  it  was  a  sacrament  by  which  they 
were  bound  to  obedience  and  service  ;  and  the 
god  was  equally  bound  to  friendship  and  pro- 
tection.    This  was  the  early  idea  of  sacrifice. 

But  change  comes  over  all  these  ideas  as 
men  themselves  change  and  develop.  So  by 
and  by,  instead  of  its  being  simply  a  common 
meal,  it  was  a  gift  to  the  god  ;  and  they  came 
not  only  to  bring  him  food,  but  anything  else 
which  they  supposed  he  might  desire.     And 


144  Saviours 

then  there  entered  in  at  last,  not  simply  the 
offering-  of  a  gift,  but  the  sacrificial  idea.  It 
was  a  victim,  offered  to  please  or  placate  the 
supposed  anger  of  the  invisible  Being ;  and, 
naturally,  this  underwent  a  transformation  until 
people  came  to  feel  that  the  finer,  the  more 
precious  the  victim,  the  more  power  over  the 
invisible  deities.  And  so  there  arose  not  only 
the  offering  of  food,  gifts  of  one  kind  and  an- 
other, not  only  the  slaying  of  animals,  but  hu- 
man sacrifice, — not  originating,  as  you  might 
suppose,  in  human  cruelty,  but  simply  in  the 
desire  of  the  worshipper  to  bring  to  his  god 
the  most  precious  victim  that  he  could  imagine, 
supposing  thus  that  he  would  obtain  special 
favour  from  the  deity. 

We  find  this  illustrated  in  that  wonderful 
poem  of  Tennyson's,  "The  Victim."  There 
is  an  effort  on  the  part  of  the  priests  to  find 
out  which  is  dearer  to  the  king,  the  wife  or 
their  son  ;  for  the  dearest  must  be  slain.  And 
at  last  he  shows  such  devoted  love  for  his  wife 
that  the  priests  make  up  their  mind  that  she  is 
the  more  precious  offering,  and  seize  upon  her 
and  offer  her  to  the  gods.  So  the  idea  of  hu- 
man sacrifice  arose  out  of  this  thought  that, 
the  more  precious  the  victim,  the  more  power 
over  the  god.     So  in  every  nation  all  over  the 


Saviours  145 

world  you  will  find  sacrificed  saviours.  Our 
own  Christ  is  not  by  any  means  the  only  one. 
In  ancient  India,  Krishna  and  Vishnu;  inancient 
Greece,  Prometheus  ;  in  Egypt,  Osiris;  in  coun- 
tries of  this  world,  among  the  primitive  peoples 
here  on  this  new  continent,  everywhere,  out  of 
the  same  natural  ideas  have  sprung  this  natural 
growth. 

Not  only  human  sacrifices,  but  by  and  by,  in 
the  case  of  Prometheus,  Osiris,  and  Vishnu,  di- 
vine or  semi-divine  beings  offered,  sometimes 
to  appease  the  wrath  of  the  gods,  sometimes  a 
willing  victim,  testifying  to  the  love  of  him  who 
was  thus  devoted  to  humanity. 

But  by  and  by,  as  civilisation  advances,  ideas 
of  this  sort  are  more  or  less  outgrown  ;  and  we 
see  the  great  religions  of  the  world  develop. 
Among  the  people,  in  the  popular  religions,  we 
see  all  these  ideas  which  I  have  spoken  of  still 
holding  the  imaginations  of  the  heart,  but  at 
the  same  time  philosophical  schemes  as  to  the 
meaninof  of  the  universe,  the  orio-in,  and  condi- 
tion  of  man,  and  his  needs,  growing  up.  As, 
for  instance, — merely  to  point  them  out  as  I 
pass, — in  China  we  find  the  work  of  Confucius. 
Confucious  does  not  claim  to  know  anything 
about  the  gods  or  any  other  world.  He  says 
frankly  :  "  Why,  when  I  do  not  know  the  mean- 


14^  Saviours 

ing  of  this,  should  I  try  to  explain  any  other  ?  " 
But  he  teaches  that  men  are  naturally  good, 
and  that  it  is  only  conditions,  environments, 
that  call  out  and  develop  evil  in  them.  So,  he 
says,  if  we  only  have  before  us  fine  models,  if 
we  keep  alive  the  traditions  of  the  heroes  and 
noble  ones  of  the  past,  and  imitate  them,  the 
ills  of  the  world  will  be  done  away. 

We  find  Gautama,  the  Buddha,  reforming, 
or  attempting  to  reform  the  pre-existing  condi- 
tions in  India ;  and  he  teaches  that  these  evils 
are  incidental,  and  necessarily  incidental,  to  any 
human,  finite  life.  We  are  doomed  to  be  reborn 
over  and  over  and  over  again, — committed  to 
this  endless  circle  of  births,  and,  consequently, 
suffering.  And  the  cause  of  it  is  human  desire. 
So  the  way  to  escape  is  to  quench  desire. 
Thus  he  advises  putting  people  through  a  dis- 
cipline of  moral  goodness  and  of  ascetic  de- 
velopment, so  that  by  and  by  they  will  outgrow 
the  necessity  of  being  born  again,  and  will 
enter  Nirvana.     This  is  Gautama's  salvation. 

Mohammed  originates  his  great  religion, — 
which  is  making  conquests  to-day  in  some  parts 
of  the  earth  quite  as  rapidly  as  Christianity, — 
and  he  teaches  that,  if  we  only  believe  the 
short  creed,  "  Allah  is  Allah,  and  Mohammed  is 
his  prophet  "  and  go  through  the  routine  and 


Saviours  147 

services, — committing-  to  memory  certain  parts 
of  the  Scriptures  regarded  as  so  sacred  tliat 
that  alone  is  sometimes  enough  to  constitute 
salvation, — then  humanity  will  outgrow  all  its 
suffering  and  sorrows. 

So  we  see  over  the  earth  men  speculating  as 
to  what  shall  be  done  to  overcome  the  evils  of 
the  world.  And  reliijions  are  not  done  beinof 
born  yet,  if  we  can  judge  by  the  recent  cults. 
In  Syria  to-day,  one  has  assumed  the  title  of 
the  Bab,  the  Gate,  the  Opening,  the  Entrance  ; 
and  some  of  our  Americans  have  become  be- 
lievers in  this  new  religion,  and  are  trying  to 
propagate  it  here  in  the  City  of  New  York. 

Mormonism  and  Christian  Science  show 
that  out  of  this  seething  heart  and  imagination 
and  hope  and  fear  and  love  of  man  may  be  ex- 
pected to  come  still  new  religions  in  the  future. 
They  all  have  for  their  one  object  to  save  men 
from  suffering,  from  disease,  from  evil  of  every 
kind. 

Let  us  turn  and  consider  for  a  little  our  own 
Christian  Saviour, — the  evolution  and  change 
of  the  thouQrhts  which  have  been  held  concern- 
ing  him.  In  order  to  understand  it,  we  must 
go  back  to  Hebrew  times.  The  early  Hebrews 
held  substantially  the  same  ideas  of  the  gods 
and  of   sacrifice,    even  human    sacrifice,   that 


148  Saviours 

prevailed  among  other  peoples.  But,  as  they 
came  to  devote  themselves  more  and  more  to 
the  worship  of  their  own  peculiar  god,  they 
entertained  the  idea  that  they  were  the  chosen 
people  of  this  god.  They  believed  this  before 
they  became  monotheists.  And  since  he  was 
the  mightiest  god  that  there  was  in  existence, 
they,  as  his  chosen  people,  would  ultimately 
be  set  on  high  among  the  nations  of  the  earth. 

You  see  the  inevitable  logic  :  Our  god  is 
greater  than  any  other  god.  He  has  chosen 
us,  and  our  prosperity  comes  from  the  patron- 
age and  care  of  this  invisible  being.  There- 
fore, success,  conquest,  power  over  all  the 
nations,  must  be  ours.     That  was  the  log-ic. 

Out  of  this  idea,  as  the  years  went  by, 
sprung  their  anticipation  of  a  Messiah.  Their 
monarchy  was  short-lived  ;  but  David  and  the 
glory  of  his  reign  came  to  be  the  type  of  all 
that  was  grand  in  the  way  of  earthly  rule.  So 
they  could  not  believe  that  their  god  was  to 
desert  them  permanently.  Thus,  when  they 
were  carried  off  into  captivity,  it  was  only  as 
punishment  for  their  sins,  and,  when  they  be: 
came  good  enough,  when  they  kept  the  law 
carefully  enough,  then  the  deliverer,  the  Sav- 
iour, was  to  appear.  So  grew  up  their  antici- 
pation   of   a    Messiah,    some    one  born    as  a 


Saviours  149 

descendant  of  David,  who  w^s  to  come  and 
rule  the  world,  and  set  them  on  high  among 
the  peoples. 

But  this  kingdom  as  it  was  to  be  held  by 
them  was  an  earthly  kingdom.  They  did  not 
put  it  off  in  the  skies.  It  was  to  be  here, 
among  men.  Jts  capital  was  to  be  Jerusalem, 
which  was  to  them  the  centre  of  the  earth. 

But  he  did  not  come.  In  the  period  just 
preceding  the  birth  of  Jesus  the  air  was  full 
of  expectation.  There  were  Christs  many, 
**  Christ,"  as  you  know,  being  only  the  Greek 
form  of  the  Hebrew  "Messiah  "  ;  and  anticipa- 
tion was  rife,  and  they  were  looking  on  every 
hand.  Then  came  the  gentle  Nazarene  who 
did  not  claim  to  be  the  Messiah.  He  did 
claim  to  teach  a  reform  In  the  national  relig-ion. 
He  did  claim  to  speak  for  the  universal  Father- 
hood of  God  and  the  universal  brotherhood  of 
man.  He  did  speak  of  God's  readiness,  His 
willinofness,  to  forgfive  and  fold  to  His  lovinof 
heart  all  the  erring  children  of  the  world. 
A.nd  he  taugfht  that  love  for  God  and  love  for 
man  was  the  one  cure  for  all  the  evils  of  the 
world ;  and  he  is  the  first  great  teacher  in 
history  who  did  put  forth  these  ideals  as  the 
sufficient  means  by  which  the  world  might  be 
saved.     This  was  the  life-work  of  Jesus. 


1 50  Saviours 

But  the  people  were  not  ready  for  him  ; 
and,  when  he  spoke  against  the  temple,  when 
he  touched  the  self-love  and  pride  of  the  popu- 
lar party,  when  he  discredited  their  sacrifices, 
when  he  said  that  the  publican  who  truly  re- 
pented of  his  sin  and  proposed  to  do  right  was 
better  than  the  most  exact  keeper  of  the  law, 
he  cut  across  all  their  prejudices  ;  and  they 
would  have  none  of  him.  And  when  they 
understood  that  he  preached  against  the  tem- 
ple, and  when  they  saw  that  the  people  fol- 
lowed after  him,  so  that  there  might  be  danger 
of  complications  with  the  dominant  power  of 
Rome,  they  cried,  "Away  with  him!"  And 
he  was  taken  out  to  the  little  hill  beyond  the 
walls  of  the  city,  and  hung  upon  a  tree,  and 
crucified.     This  was  Jesus. 

I  do  not  believe  that  Jesus  claimed  ever  to 
be  the  Messiah  that  the  Jewish  people  ex- 
pected. I  cannot  go  into  this  in  detail  at  this 
time  ;  but  we  know, — we  do  not  guess, — we 
know  that  -the  New  Testament  has  been 
changed  in  many  places  and  ways,  as  the 
popular  belief  concerning  the  nature  and  work 
of  Jesus  changed,  until  many  a  word  is  put 
upon  his  lips  which  there  is  no  good  reason  to 
suppose  he  ever  uttered. 

Jesus,  then,  after  he  went  away  or  during 


Saviours  1 5 1 

the  latter  part  of  his  ministry  before  he  died, 
came  to  be  looked  upon  b)  a  party  as  the  pos- 
sible Messiah  they  had  been  expecting.  He 
did  not,  indeed,  do  what  they  supposed  the 
Messiah  was  to  accomplish  ;  but  they  thought 
perhaps  it  was  only  postponed,  that  he  was 
going  to  do  it,  and  so  they  clung  to  the  belief 
that  he  was  tlie  Messiah  who  was  to  come. 
But  it  was  no  part  of  their  creed  that  the 
Messiah  should  be  put  to  an  ignominious 
death  ;  and  we  know  from  the  records  that 
the  disciples,  after  the  crucifixion,  were  dis- 
heartened and  scattered.  The  two  on  the 
way  to  Emmaus,  say :  "  We  trusted  that  this 
had  been  he  who  was  to  have  redeemed  Israel." 
But  that  trust  is  broken  and  destroyed. 

But  the  love  and  reverence  for  him  had  en- 
tered into  the  hearts  of  those  who  stood  closest 
to  him  ;  and,  as  they  thought  the  matter  over, 
they  perhaps  quite  unconsciously  began  to  re- 
interpret the  Messianic  hope.  The  idea  sprung 
up  that  he  had  simply  gone  into  the  heavens 
for  a  little  while  and  that  he  was  comino-  back 
aorain  to  establish  the  Messianic  king^dom  here 
on  the  earth.  If  you  will  read  the  New  Testa- 
ment with  that  thought  in  mind,  you  will  find 
it  all  on  tiptoe  with  expectation  of  what  is 
called  the  second  coming  of  Jesus:  and  the 


152  Saviours 

words  are  put  upon  the  lips  of  Jesus  himself, 
the  definite  statement  that  he  was  to  return 
before  that  generation  had  passed  away. 

And  then  they  began  to  wonder  why  he 
was  allowed  to  be  put  to  death ;  and  the  old 
paganism  of  their  past — the  paganism  of  the 
Old  World — swept  over  their  thoughts,  and 
the  idea  took  possession  of  them  that  he  was 
a  sacrificial  victim,  not  merely  a  natural  human 
martyr,  the  Son  of  God  and  the  Son  of  Man, 
dying  as  thousands  have  died  for  His  great 
truth,  but  that  he  was  a  victim,  a  divinely  ap- 
pointed victim,  and  that  he  suffered  and  died 
— not  lived  and  taught — to  save  the  world. 

And  what  did  they  suppose  he  was  to  save 
men  from,  and  how  was  it  to  be  explained  ? 
Now  here  is  the  point  I  referred  to  near  the 
beginning,  when  I  said  I  should  indicate  the 
changes  which  pass  over  the  minds  of  people 
concerning  the  same  one  saviour.  For  hun- 
dreds of  years — to  answer  the  question  I  have 
just  raised^— it  was  popularly  believed  that 
Jesus  was  the  price  that  God  paid  to  the 
devil,  who  had  become  the  rightful  owner  and 
ruler  of  men.  He  paid  him  to  the  devil's 
vindictiveness  and  vengeance,  that  He  might  re- 
deem those  who  were  in  the  infernal  keeping  in 
the  lower  regions.    This  was  the  popular  belief. 


Saviours  i53 

Then  it  was  believed  that  he  died  to  ap- 
pease the  anger  of  God.  God  was  an^ry  witli 
men  on  account  of  Adam's  sin  and  fall.  That 
idea,  heathenish,  pagan,  abominable  beyond  all 
words  to  express,  has  been  held  by  modern 
theologians.  The  idea  was  that  on  account  of 
the  one  transoression  of  Adam,  men  became 
tainted,  corrupted  sinners  the  moment  they 
breathe,  and  that  God  is  angry  with  them,  and 
that  that  anger  burns  with  unquenchable  flames 
down  into  hell  and  into  an  eternity  of  torture. 
Dr.  W.  G.  T.  Shedd  who  died  not  long  ago, 
has  a  sermon  the  title  of  which  carries  the 
whole  idea, — "Sin  a  Nature,  and  that  Nature 
Guilt."  Thus  the  new-born  babe  is  a  guilty 
sinner,  deserving  eternal  hell.  So  Christ  died 
as  a  victim  to  appease  the  wrath  of  the  Father. 

Then  about  the  tenth  century  Anselm  wrote 
a  book  in  which  he  put  forth  what  is  known  as 
the  governmental  theory.  Christ  died  not  as 
a  price  paid  to  the  devil,  not  to  appease  God, 
but  to  meet  a  governmental  exigency.  God 
wanted  to  be  just,  but  could  not  unless  some- 
body suffered.  So  Jesus  was  offered  as  a 
divine  victim  to  satisfy  the  supposed  justice 
of  God,  and  make  it  possible  for  the  Father 
to  forgive. 

Then  there  was  another  theory, — that    he 


154  Saviours 

died  and  went  down  into  hell  so  as  to  suffer 
the  exact  amount  of  agony  that  all  the  souls 
that  were  to  be  saved  would  have  had  to  suf- 
fer throughout  all  eternity.  So  he  became  a 
substitute  for  human  sufferings ;  and  those 
who  believed  on  him  and  accepted  him  as 
such  might  possibly  be  saved  and  go  to 
heaven.  These  theories  have  been  followed 
in  the  modern  world  by  the  doctrine  which  is 
most  popular  now  among  the  liberal  orthodox, 
— the  belief  that  Jesus  suffered  and  died  to 
manifest  the  love  of  God,  not  to  change  Him, 
but  to  teach  men  how  much  God  loved  them 
and  how  ready  He  was  to  forgive. 

So  you  see  that  the  theories  held  in  any  one 
religion  concerning  the  same  saviour  change 
as  men  grow  and  become  more  civilised.  The 
old  barbaric  conceptions  die  hard,  but  they 
have  to  die  when  men  get  so  that  they  can 
endure  them  no  longer. 

Now  I  wish  you  to  carefully  note  what  Jesus 
himself  said.  He  says  nothing  about  his 
death  as  a  price  paid  to  the  devil  ;  nothing 
about  it  as  appeasing  the  wrath  of  God  ;. 
nothing  about  any  governmental  exigency  that 
needed  to  be  met  ;  nothing  about  any  substi- 
tutional theory  ;  not  even  anything  about  any 
moral  theory  such  as  Dr.  Bushnell  advocated. 


Saviours  155 

He  sums  up  his  attitude,  officially,  once  and 
forever,  in  that  marvellous  parable  of  the 
Prodigal  Son.  He  does  not  think  there  is 
any  gulf  between  God  and  His  children,  no 
M'rath  that  needs  to  be  appeased,  no  devil 
lurking  in  the  background  to  be  paid  his  price, 
no  substitution.  The  father  yearns  for  and 
loves  his  boy,  no  matter  how  sinful  he  is,  away 
off  in  the  far  country  ;  and  when  the  boy  rises 
and  says,  "  I  will  go  home  to  my  father,"  the 
father  does  not  say  :  "  Well,  what  offering  are 
you  going  to  bring  ?  How  are  you  going  to 
appease  my  wrath  ?  "  He  does  not  say,  "the 
family  government  will  go  all  to  pieces  if  I  for- 
give you  without  somebody  suffering."  He 
does  not  say  anything.  Only  the  moment  he 
sees  him  a  great  way  off,  he  runs  to  him,  and 
falls  on  his  neck  and  kisses  him,  and  then 
makes  a  feast  in  the  gladness  of  his  heart, 
because  he  is  come  back  again. 

That  is  the  official  teaching  of  JesiLS  as  to 
the  attitude  of  God  towards  his  erring,  sinful 
children. 

If  Jesus  had  known  anything  about  these 
theological  schemes,  if  he  had  known  they  were 
true,  then  was  the  place  and  then  was  the  time 
for  him  to  tell  us  of  it ;  for,  if  he  did  not  tell 
us,  he  was  misleading  us,  misrepresenting  God 


15^  Saviours 

in  what  was  the  one  most  vital  thing  In  human 
life.  This  then  is  the  theory  of  Jesus  concern- 
ing salvation. 

Now  we  are  ready  to  note  that  this  evolu- 
tion of  human  thought  and  feeling  is  perfectly 
natural,  when  we  consider  how  man  starts  in 
this  world,  inexperienced,  and  having  to  learn 
the  facts  about  the  universe  and  human  nature 
by  centuries  of  study  and  discovery.  But  we 
have  made  discoveries  in  this  modern  world 
which  account  simply,  adequately,  naturally, 
justly,  for  the  facts  of  human  life,  and  for  our 
modern  interpretation  of  those  facts  in  the  way 
of  what  is  needed  for  human  salvation. 

What  do  we  know  ?  We  know  that  man 
has  never  fallen.  We  know  that  this  world 
has  never  been  invaded  by  any  malign  spirit- 
ual power  from  outside.  We  know  that  the 
devil  and  all  his  hosts  are  the  creation  of  the 
barbaric  imagination.  We  know  that  there  is 
no  gulf  between  God  and  His  world — His  child- 
ren— that  needs  to  be  supernaturally  bridged. 
We  know  there  is  no  divine  wrath  against  His 
children.  We  know  that  this  world,  in  the> 
main,  is  just  what  God  intended  it  to  be  in  pro- 
cess of  develojDment  towards  something  else. 
All  these  things  we  know. 

Now  what  are  the  facts  concerning  man's 


Saviours  157 

condition, — the  evils  from  wliicli  he  needs  to 
be  deHvered  ?  Man  Is  ignorant,  of  necessity. 
God  could  not  suddenly  create  a  wise  man  if 
he  tried  ;  because  what  we  mean  by  wisdom, 
by  knowledge,  is  the  summed  up  results  of 
human  experience,  to  be  obtained  in  no  other 
way.  Infinite  power  has  nothing  to  do  with 
creating  an  ab'^urdity,  with  doing  that  which,  in 
the  nature  of  things,  cannot  be  done.  Man  is 
ignorant,  then  ;  and  he  needs  to  know. 

Another  thing,  man  starts  in  life  with  all  the 
inheritance  of  the  animal  world — the  snake, 
the  tiger,  the  hyena,  all  the  lower  animal  forces 
and  forms — surging  up  in  his  lower  nature  and 
aspiring  to  take  command  of  liim.  He  is  dow- 
ered with  a  divine  power  that,  in  the  process 
of  aofes,  slouijhs  off  and  leaves  behind  the  ani- 
mal,  and  climbs  up  into  heart  and  brain  and 
soul.  Man,  then,  has  this  animal  nature  which 
he  needs  to  master  and  control ;  for  there  is 
nothing,  mark  you,  in  the  animal  part  of  man 
that  is  not  in  its  nature  and  essence  right.  It 
simply  needs  to  be  dominated  and  used,  and 
not  abused. 

Man,  then,  is  selfish,  filled  with  greed  and 
desire  to  obtain  things ;  and  it  is  perfectly 
rio-ht  he  should  be.  All  orrowth  comes  from 
the  fact  that  man  hungers  for  things,  and  seeks 


158  Saviours 

to  obtain  them, — for  bread,  for  love,  for  truth, 
for  beauty,  for  all  sorts  of  things, — and  reaches 
out  to  grasp  them  ;  and  selfishness,  in  the  evil 
sense,  is  only  the  willingness  of  a  man  to  get 
these  desirable  things  at  the  expense  of  the 
welfare  of  somebody  else.  There  is  no  evil  In 
selfishness  anywhere,  except  right  in  there. 
Man,  then  needs  to  be  developed. 

He  needs  also  intellectual  development,  so 
as  to  widen  his  conception  of  the  universe,  and 
give  room  and  range  for  his  powers  as  a  limit- 
less, thinking  being.  All  truth  he  needs  to 
know.  He  needs  also  the  conquest  of  the 
beautiful,  to  make  life  fair.  So  art  is  one  of 
the  ministers  and  saviours  of  man.  He  needs 
discovery,  the  Inventions,  so  that  he  may  ob- 
tain control  of  all  the  natural  forces  of  the 
universe.  He  needs  the  power  to  create  a 
limitless  supply  for  his  limitless  needs.  He 
needs  then  to  be  able  to  create  wealth  In  all  its 
multitudinous  forms. 

What  is  a  perfect  man  ?  What  would  we 
regard  as  a  saved  man  ?  A  man  who  is  a 
splendid,  perfect  animal,  to  start  with,  In  per- 
fect physical  condition  ;  a  man  with  a  grand 
brain,  so  that  he  may  unlock  all  the  doorways 
to  the  truth  o'f  things  ;  a  man  loving  all  lovable 
things ;    a  man    looking  up    to    and  aspiring 


Saviours  1 59 

towards  all  fine  things  that  are  beyond  him ;  a 
man  with  moral  perfection,  sta'nding  in  perfect 
loving  —  and  so  just  and  helpful  —  relations  to 
all  other  things  that  live  ;  a  man  spiritually  ad- 
justed, recognising  himself  as  a  child  of  God, 
and  seeking  to  come  into  more  intimate  and 
personal  relations  with  God.  A  man  like  this 
would  be  saveS.  There  is  nothing  you  could 
give  him  which  would  add  to  his  perfection  or 
his  glory. 

Who,  then,  are  the  saviours  of  the  world  ?  In 
some  lower  and  preliminary  sense  let  me  note 
what  I  have  been  saying  by  implication. 
Those  men  that  teach  us  the  development  of 
the  body,  that  help  us  to  find  the  secrets  of 
health,  are  some  of  the  saviours  of  mankind. 
So  are  those  who  have  helped  us  to  eliminate 
pain  from  the  world,  those  who  teach  us  the 
secret  of  outgrowing  mental  sorrows,  those 
who  help  us  to  discover  the  secrets  of  nature 
around  us,  and  so  to  control  the  forces  by 
which  wealth  is  created  and  want  is  done 
away.  They  know  little  of  what  they  are 
doing  who  fight  against  the  accumulation  of 
wealth.  Humanity  as  yet,  in  spite  of  what 
we  call  the  tremendous  gains  of  the  last  cent- 
ury, is  poor,  suffering  for  want  of  a  million 
things  that  can  never  be  attained  until  we  can 


i6o  Saviours 

control  the  forces  of  production  more  com- 
pletely than  we  have  been  able  to  do  yet. 

So  the  creators  of  wealth  must  take  their 
places  among  the  saviours  of  man.  Those 
who  have  delved  into  the  secrets  of  the  earth 
and  explored  the  heavens  and  fed  this  infinite 
hunger  of  man  for  truth, — these,  if  they  have 
done  nothing  else,  if  they  have  forgotten  re- 
ligion, philanthropy,  no  matter  what  else  they 
have  done,  or  not  done,  if  they  have  helped 
man  to  grasp  and  discover  truth,  so  far  they 
are  among  the  world's  saviours. 

Those  who  have  helped  us  discover  and 
master  the  secrets  of  beauty,  the  artists,  the 
sculptors,  the  painters,  the  creators  of  beauti- 
ful buildings ;  those  who  have  wrought  the 
earth  over  under  the  form  of  landscape  gar- 
dening,— all  those  who  have  been  ministers  of 
beauty  are  among  the  saviours  of  mankind. 
Those  who  have  discovered  new  truths  in  any 
direction  ;  those  who  have  helped  the  world, 
have  helped  unfold  and  develop  complete  man- 
hood and  womanhood, — these  in  their  degree 
have  been  saviours. 

But,  to  come  back  again  to  that  which  is 
the  most  important  thing  of  all,  we  find  our- 
selves bowing  once  more  in  the  presence  of 
the  gentle  Nazarene,  the  Saviour,  ou7'  Saviour, 


Saviours  "      i6i 

in  the  supreme,  the  universal  sense  ;  and  why  ? 
Jesus  taught  us — what?  He  said, — and  note 
the  significance  of  it, — "  Seek  ye  first  the  king- 
dom of  God  and  His  righteousness."  He  put 
his  finger  on  the  one  central,  essential  thing  in 
human  life.  A  man  may  miss  other  things, — 
he  may  miss  extensive  knowledge,  he  may  be 
ignorant,  he  nihy  be  poor,  he  may  have  little 
artistic  sense  or  appreciation  of  beauty,  he  may 
know  nothing  of  music,  all  the  wonderful  world 
in  other  directions  may  be  closed  to  him  ;  but 
if  he  loves,  if  he  has  learned  the  secret  that 
God  is  love  and  the  divine  life  among  men  is 
love,  then  he  has  a  key  to  that  which  is  the 
most  important  of  all  in  these  human  lives  of 
ours.  The  loving  soul,  the  gentle  spirit,  the 
one  who  wishes  to  help  God,  to  serve,  will  find 
this  one  thing  alone  guiding  him  in  the  midst 
of  his  ignorance.  He  may  make  mistakes  ; 
but  will  make  no  vital  mistakes.  He  may  miss 
much  else  ;  but,  so  long  as  he  loves,  he  is  in 
heaven  even  here  among  men,  though  in  the 
midst  of  trouble  and  trial ;  for  God  is  love,  and 
love  is  God,  and  love  is  heaven. 

Jesus,  then,  is  our  Saviour  here.  So  far  as 
the  authentic  teaching  of  Jesus  goes,  he  does 
not  seem  to  have  cared  for  what  we  call  intel- 
lectual truth.      He  gave  us  no  philosophy,  not 


1 62  Saviours 

a  word  of  science.  He  seemed  to  care  little 
for  the  aesthetic  side  of  things.  We  have  no 
intimation  that  he  knew  anything  about  music. 
He  recognised  the  beauty  of  the  flowers  by 
the  wayside,  and  saw  in  them  intimations  of 
the  love  and  kindliness  of  the  Father  in  heaven  ; 
but  as  for  philosophy,  for  science,  for  art,  for 
literature, — all  these  things  he  seemed  to  care 
nothing  for.  At  any  rate,  there  is  no  authen- 
tic testimony  that  he  cared  for  them  much  ;  but 
the  one  thing  he  did  care  for  was  that  men 
should  know  that  God  was  their  Father,  that 
they  were  His  children,  and  that  the  way  to 
get  rid  of  human  evils  was  to  love  men,  love 
even  your  enemies,  love  the  unlovely, — that  is, 
love  the  possibilities  in  the  unlovely ;  love  the 
invisible  soul  that  might  be  evolved  and  devel- 
oped ;  love  the  child  of  God  in  the  tramp,  in 
the  criminal,  in  the  outcast ;  surround  them 
with  this  atmosphere  of  warmth  and  love,  so 
as  to  make  these  beautiful  things  grow.  This 
was  the  teaching  of  Jesus ;  and  this  is  the  se- 
cret of  that  which  is  most  important  in  human 
life. 

I  do,  indeed,  believe  that  it  is  immensely  im- 
portant that  we  know  the  truth  of  things,  that 
we  develop  wealth,  that  we  be  able  to  elimi- 
nate human  pain,  physical  suffering  from  the 


Saviours  163 

world,  that  we  develop  art  and  beauty  of  every 
kind,  that  we  make  human  life  rounded  and 
complete.  But  if  we  have  got  to  give  up  ev- 
erything else,  we  must  keep  that  which  was 
the  secret  and  teaching  of  the  Nazarcne  ;  for 
that  is  more  important  than  all  the  others 
combined. 

So  Jesus  remains,  in  the  supreme  sense  of 
the  word,  after  all  the  analysis  and  scepticism, 
after  all  philosophy  and  science  have  done 
their  work, — he  remains  for  us  the  supreme 
ideal  of  divine  manhood.  So  in  that  direction 
he  is  our  Saviour.  And  he  is  the  more 
touching  to  us,  appeals  the  more  directly  and 
strongly  to  the  heart,  because  he  teaches  an- 
other deep  secret  of  life.  He  is  the  suffering 
Saviour,  not  simply  the  loving  Saviour.  But 
he  is  love,  willing  to  suffer  even  to  the  death 
for  the  objects  of  his  love  ;  and  that  is  the 
supreme  thing  in  all  the  universe. 

And  let  me  note  that  the  life  of  Jesus  simply 
illustrates  supremely  that  which  is  of  the  very 
warp  and  woof  of  things,  that  which  we  can 
read  in  the  very  beginnings  of  life  on  earth. 
Go  down  as  far  as  you  please ;  and,  if  we  can 
interpret  the  life  that  is  there,  we  find  this 
vicarious  suffering  love.  Birds  will  sit  upon 
their  nests  in  the  face  of  danger,  and  die  in  the 


164  Saviours 

attempt  to  protect  their  eggs.  Let  their  young 
be  attacked,  and  they  will  face  any  monster  in 
the  attempt  to  lure  the  invader  away  from  the 
place  where  the  young  are  secreted, — suffering, 
consecrated  love,  love  even  willing  to  die. 
Among  dogs,  horses,  the  higher  animals  every- 
where, if  you  choose  to  study  it,  you  will  find 
the  illustration  of  this  secret  and  central  thing 
in  all  life.  Life  is  bound  too^ether  into  one. 
No  individual  is  anything  more  than  an  indi- 
vidual cell  in  an  organism  ;  and,  if  one  mem- 
ber rejoices,  all  the  members  rejoice  with  it, — 
if  one  suffers,  all  suffer  alike.  We  are  under 
that  law  and  necessity  ;  and  we  cannot  escape. 
If  our  friends  go  wrong,  our  hearts  are  wrung. 
If  they  succeed,  we  enter  into  their  joy.  And 
the  ideal,  true  life  is  that  which  is  willing  vol- 
untarily to  endure  this  suffering,  that  the  loved 
one  may  be  benefited  by  it. 

And  so,  as  man  has  climbed  up  the  ages, 
read  it  everywhere.  What  else  is  taught  by 
the  lives  of  the  martyrs,  the  confessors,  the 
teachers,  the  witnesses,  those  who  have  stood 
for  truth  ?  Socrates  taught  it  in  ancient  Greece.. 
The  Buddha  tauorht  it  in  far-off  India  hundreds 
of  years  before  Christianity  was  known.  All 
over  the  world  and  in  all  ages,  you  find,  how- 
ever misinterpreted  the  fact  may  be  in  the  lurid 


Saviours  165 

light  of  prevailing  barbarism,  the  vicarious  suf- 
fering saviours. 

In  our  own  country  we  have  just  passed  the 
birthday  of  him  who  perhaps  is  the  greatest 
American  that  ever  lived, — Lincoln,  the  martyr 
Lincoln,  whose  power  over  this  nation  and  over 
the  world  and  over  all  the  future  lies  largely  in 
this  :  that  he  suffered,  that  he  carried  the  bur- 
dens, the  sins,  the  wrongs,  of  the  American  peo- 
ple on  his  wearied  brain  and  burdened,  bleed- 
ing heart,  and  that  he  died  because  he  was 
faithful,  as  was  the  Nazarene,  to  the  last  ex- 
treme. Faithful  to  what  ?  To  an  intellectual 
truth,  to  art,  to  beauty  ?  No.  Faithful  to  the 
moral  ideal,  faithful  to  God,  faithful  to  man, 
living  and  dying  to  deliver  the  world  from  a 
burden  of  sorrow  and  wronor. 

It  is  the  same  principle  ;  and  the  supremacy 
of  Jesus  lies  in  this, — that  he  is  not  an  isolated 
case,  that  he  is  not  an  interpolated  fact  thrust 
into  the  human  order  from  without,  but  that  he 
was  born  in  that  human  order,  and  sums  up  in 
himself  that  which  is  finest  and  sweetest  and 
noblest  in  it  all — the  suffering  love  of  a  saviour, 
willing  to  suffer  for  the  sake  of  love,  and  in 
order  to  deliver  the  object  of  that  love  from 
suffering  and  from  evil  of  every  kind. 


VIII 

WORSHIP 

WE  have  found,  as  the  result  of  our  studies 
so  far,  that  reHgion  is  an  essential  and 
permanent  part  of  human  nature  and  human 
life ;  and,  since  worship  has  always  been  re- 
garded as  an  essential  part  of  religion,  we 
might  think  it  safe  to  assume  that  worship  also 
is  to  be  permanent.  But  "worship"  has  cov- 
ered a  large  variety  of  things  in  the  evolution 
of  the  religious  life  of  the  race.  And  some  of 
these  things,  which  were  once  regarded  as  abso- 
lutely essential  to  any  true  worship,  have  al- 
ready passed  away.  Nor  this  alone  ;  they  are 
regarded  from  the  point  of  view  of  our  present 
civilisation  as  not  only  unreasonable,  but  as 
barbaric  or' even  immoral. 

It  seems  wise,  therefore,  that  we  should 
trace  the  growth  for  a  little  of  man's  ideas 
concerning  worship,  and  see,  if  we  may,  what 
parts  of  worship  are  to  pass  away,  and  what 
are  to  be  permanent ;  i.  e.,  what  is  the  essential 
thing  in  worship. 

i66 


Worship  167 

We  have  already  seen  that  by  a  necessity  of 
human  nature  man's  early  thoughts  about  God 
were  ignorant,  crude,  barbaric.  We  have  seen 
that  men,  of  necessity,  worshipped  not  simply 
one  God,  but  many  gods.  And  these  gods 
have  been  very  much  like  their  worshippers. 
We  find  this  to  be  true  in  any  stage  of  human 
development.  It  is  very  difficult  for  us  to 
think'  of  God  as  anything  more  than  the  reflex 
of  the  best  and  highest,  the  noblest,  the  sweet- 
est, the  truest  things  in  ourselves.  And  men 
on  the  barbaric  level,  of  necessity,  have  bar- 
baric thoughts  about  these  invisible  powers 
that  they  think  of  as  on  every  hand.  These 
beings,  then,  are  somewhat  like  themselves, — 
having  the  same  dispositions,  the  same  wants, 
pleased  after  the  same  general  fashion. 

Religion  in  all  ages  has,  of  necessity,  been 
the  attempt  on  the  part  of  men  to  get  into 
right  relations  with  these  unseen  powers,  if 
they  have  been  polytheists,  or  with  the  un- 
seen Power,  since  we  have  come  to  believe 
that  there  is  only  one.  The  object  of  all  wor- 
ship has  been  to  get  into  right,  into  helpful 
relations  with  these  invisible  beings.  And 
since  men  have  of  necessity  thought  of  the 
gods  as  substantially  made  in  their  own  image, 
as  men,   only  invisible,   larger,   mightier,   but 


1 68  Worship 

endowed  with  substantially  the  same  tastes 
and  feeling,  the  same  wants,  it  has  been  nat- 
ural that,  in  their  worship,  they  should  try  to 
please  them,  as  they  tried  to  please  the  visible 
potentates,  chiefs  and  kings  under  whose  power 
they  lived. 

And  what  are  the  great  needs  of  early  man  ? 
the  great  needs,  for  that  matter,  of  man  in 
any  stage  of  his  career  ?  What  are  the  few 
chief  things  that  men  have  cared  for  ?  Food, 
drink,  gifts,  the  gratification  of  their  physical 
desires,  praise,  honour.  And  early  worship 
always  attempted  to  satisfy  these  supposed 
needs  and  desires  of  the  invisible  powers. 

The  first  forms  of  worship,  then,  were  bring- 
ing to  the  gods  gifts  of  food,  no  matter  what 
the  particular  kind  of  food  may  have  been  that 
was  accessible  to  the  particular  tribe  engaged 
in  this  worship, — grains,  fish,  flesh,  anything 
that  the  people  were  accustomed  themselves 
to  feed  upon ;  drink,  poured  out  as  a  libation 
or  as  an  offering.  You  must  remember  that 
they  supposed  that  always  these  invisible  spir- 
itual beings  partook  of  the  spiritual  or  invisible 
parts  of  the  food  or  the  drink.  Then  there 
were  offerings  of  all  sorts,  gifts  of  whatever 
the  tribe  or  the  tribesmen  might  value.  Ar- 
ticles of  clothing,  weapons  of  war,  decorations, 


Worship  169 

ornaments,  works  of  crude  barbaric  art, — all 
these  things  were  brought,  and  by  the  grateful 
hearts  piled  up  as  gifts  to  the  objects  of  their 
worship. 

Sacrifice,  as  we  have  already  seen,  came  to 
be  an  important  part  of  this  worship  ;  and  the 
more  valuable  the  thinor  sacrificed,  the  more 
it  was  believed  that  the  divine  beings  were 
pleased.  So  there  came  to  be  human  sacri- 
fices. There  came  to  be  believed  in  the  sac- 
rifices of  beings  who  were  half-human  and 
half-divine, — Titans,  demigods,  incarnations  of 
the  invisible  powers.  So  the  ages  went  by, 
and  men  climbed  ever  up  to  higher  and  higher 
levels  of  civilisation,  attained  the  ability  to 
think  finer,  nobler  thoughts  of  the  invisible 
ones,  came  themselves  to  admire  sweeter  and 
nobler  things.  And  so  the  form  of  service, 
the  attempts  at  worship,  gradually  tended  to 
clarify  themselves,  and  to  come  nearer  and 
nearer  to  that  ideal  of  spiritual  worship  for 
which  Jesus  stands,  and  which  he  taught  as 
the  first  great  duty  of  man. 

I  need,  before  passing  from  this  part  of  my 
theme,  however,  to  note  certain  other  things 
which  in  the  early  world  were  regarded  as 
important  elements  of  worship.  We  find  in 
Greece,  in  Rome, — indeed,  in  nearly  all  of  the 


1 70  Worship 

ancient  nations, — that  such  things  as  now  have 
generally  passed  out  of  civilised  thought  as 
connected  with  these  matters  were  considered 
of  even  chief  importance.  The  robe  that  the 
priest  wore ;  the  attitude  in  which  he  stood 
during  his  service  ;  whether  he  faced  to  one 
quarter  of  the  heaven  or  another ;  the  imple- 
ments to  be  used  in  the  sacrifices  ;  the  forms 
of  speech  which  he  uttered  ;  the  tones  of  voice 
in  which  the  words  were  spoken  ;  — all  these 
things  have  in  some  part  of  the  world  and  at 
some  stage  in  the  history  of  humanity  been 
regarded  as  of  the  very  chiefest  importance. 
Then  there  have  been  whole  ages  during 
which  it  has  been  believed  that  men  could 
not  acceptably  approach  God  unless  they  had 
certain  definite  intellectual  ideas  concerningr 
Him,  unless  they  held  to  certain  articles  of 
belief  as  essentials  of  their  creed. 

We  find  as  the  Hebrew  nation  developed, 
that  it  gradually  outgrew  the  older  and  cruder 
ideas  concerning  worship.  It  would  be  revolt- 
ing if  I  should  describe  to  you  the  actual  cere- 
monies of  the  service  in  Solomon's  time.  The 
temple  on  these  great  occasions  was  one  vast 
slaughter-house,  hundreds  of  birds  and  animals 
being  slain,  and  their  blood  poured  out,  the 
service   requiring  great    numbers  of   men   in 


Worship  171 

order  to  carry  it  on.  The  day  came,  however, 
when  the  people  could  no  longer  believe  that 
the  great  God  sitting  up  in  heaven  cared  for 
these  things  ;  and  the  prophets  made  God  say  : 
"  Away  with  all  these  sacrifices  !  They  are  a 
weariness  and  an  abomination  unto  me.  I 
care  not  for  your  burnt-offerings,  for  your 
rivers  of  oil  that  you  pour  out.  What  I  want 
is  a  humble  and  contrite  heart." 

We  come  at  last  to  the  time  when  the 
prophet  could  say :  "  To  do  justly,  to  love 
mercy,  and  to  walk  humbly  with  God,"  is  the 
one  great  essential  on  the  part  of  him  who 
would  come  as  a  worshipper  into  His  presence. 
And  then,  at  last,  we  find  Jesus  talking  with 
the  woman  of  Samaria  by  the  well,  and  putting 
away  one  after  another  the  old  conceptions  of 
worship,  saying  that  sacrifices  were  not  essen- 
tial ;  it  was  not  necessary  that  the  worship 
should  be  offered  on  Mount  Gerizim,  neither 
in  Jerusalem,  in  the  temple  ;  none  of  these 
things  were  important ;  God  was  Spirit,  and 
and  the  true  worshipper  henceforth  must  be  he 
who  could  worship  God  in  spirit  and  in  truth. 
These  were  the  ways  by  which  God  was,  grad- 
ually, by  the  process  of  civilisation,  sifting  out 
the  nations  all  over  the  world,  gathering  to 
Himself   the    band  of   true  worshippers,  who 


1 72  Worship 

cared  not  for  the  outward  elements,  but  only 
for  the  inner  condition  of  the  heart. 

As  we  look  back  over  these  thino;s  that  have 
been  regarded  as  essential  elements  of  worship 
in  the  past,  may  we  not  rightly  measure  them 
in  the  light  of  our  loftiest  conception  of  the 
infinite  and  eternal  Spirit,  who  is  the  life  and 
the  heart  and  the  soul  of  this  universe  that 
overwhelms  us  by  its  immensity  ?  Can  we 
think  of  God  as  caring  to  have  an  animal 
killed  and  burned  to  please  Him  ?  Can  we  any 
longer  believe  with  the  writer  of  Genesis  as  he 
describes  Noah  making  a  sacrifice  after  the 
flood,  and  the  great  God  up  in  heaven  smelling 
the  savour  of  the  burnt  flesh  and  being  gratified 
and  pleased  by  it  ?  Can  we  think  of  God  any 
longer  as  needing  to  be  fed?  Did  he  not  say 
by  the  mouth  of  his  old  prophets,  "  If  I  were 
hungry,  I  would  not  tell  thee  ;  the  cattle  on  a 
thousand  hills  are  mine  "  ?  Can  we  think  of 
Him  any  longer  as  needing  drink  ? 

And  yet  so  enduring  are  these  traditions 
and  customs  that  they  seem  to  become  in- 
grained as  a  part  of  human  nature.  When  we 
launch  a  ship  here,  in  free  America,  even  to-day, 
we  must  go  through  the  last  attenuated,  worn- 
out  remnant  of  that  old,  once  universal  custom 
of  giving  the  gods  drink,  by  breaking  a  bottle 


Worship  T  73 

over  its  prow.  So  much  is  left  of  the  once 
universal  ofhce  of  libation, — pouring  out  drink 
to  the  invisible  beings. 

Can  we  think  of  God  as  pleased  with  a  gift  ? 
Even  Plato  had  reached  the  point  where  he 
said  it  was  degrading  for  us  to  suppose  any 
longer  that  the  gods  could  be  bought,  could 
be  pleased  with  offerings  of  that  sort.  And 
yet  men  all  over  the  world,  if  they  wished  to 
gain  a  favour  of  their  king,  their  chief,  their 
ruler,  came  with  a  gift  in  their  hands,  not  ex- 
pecting to  be  received  otherwise.  Almost 
universally  they  carried  over  this  conception 
into  their  worship,  the  invisible  one  from  their 
point  of  view  being  like  a  chieftain  who  needed 
to  be  bought,  placated,  who  cared  for  an  offer- 
ing, or  who  needed  to  have  some  one,  a  friend, 
a  bosom  companion,  a  favourite,  intercede  with 
him,  plead  with  him  on  behalf  of  the  peti- 
tioner. These  ideas  have  been  ingrained  as 
parts  of  almost  all  the  great  religions  of  the 
world. 

I  remember  some  years  ago,  when  I  was  in 
Rome,  visiting  one  of  the  three  or  four  hun- 
dred churches  dedicated  to  the  different 
Marys,  and  finding  a  statue  of  Mary  before 
the  altar  almost  buried  under  gifts, —  rings, 
bracelets,    jewels,    rich    clothes,    valuables   of 


1 74  Worship 

every  kind,  brought  on  the  supposition  that 
she  would  care,  and  that  she  would  plead,  per- 
haps, with  Jesus,  and  that  Jesus  would  plead 
with  the  Father,  and  so  the  worshipper  might 
win  at  last  by  this  roundabout  way  the  favour 
of  Heaven. 

Can  we  believe  that  the  infinite  God  of  this 
universe  cares  about  our  personal  adornments, 
the  robes  we  wear  ?  that  He  cares  about  the 
arrangement  of  the  altar?  that  He  cares 
whether  we  occupy  an  eastward  position  or 
look  west  or  north  or  south  ?  Is  there  any 
point  of  the  compass  to  which  we  can  look, 
and  not  be  face  to  face  with  God  ?  The  Jew 
thought  he  must  pray  looking  towards  Jerusa- 
lem ;  the  Mohammedan  worshipped  looking 
towards  Mecca  ;  and  almost  throughout  Christ- 
endom to-day — as  a  relic  of  pagan  sun-worship 
— emphasis  is  still  laid  upon  the  eastward  posi- 
tion in  prayer,  looking  towards  the  point  from 
which  the  sun  is  to  appear  in  the  morning. 

Can  we  believe  to-day  that  the  infinite  God 
of  this  universe — who  knows  how  we  in  our 
childhood  and  ignorance  seek  gropingly  after 
truth  and  so  many  times  fail  to  find  it — will 
reject  us  and  cast  us  out  on  account  of  some 
intellectual  conviction  to  which,  after  long 
struggle,  we  attain  ?     Does  He  care  so  much 


Worship  1 75 

for  the  words  on  our  hps  or  the  thoughts  in 
our  brains,  or  does  He  really  care  for  the  atti- 
tude and  love  and  tender  feeling  of  the  heart? 

What  is  it  that  the  great  God  in  heaven 
wants  of  His  children  ?  We  wish  to-day,  just 
as  much  as  did  primitive  man,  to  get  into  right 
relations  with  God.  It  is  the  one  eternal 
search  of  the  religious  effort  of  the  race, — to 
get  into  right  relations  with  God  ;  and  we  wish, 
if  we  may,  to  find  out  what  God  wants  us  to 
do  in  our  worship,  in  order  that  we  may  come 
into  right  relations  with  Him.  What  is  it  that 
He  chiefly  cares  for  as  the  essential  element  of 
worship  ?  Is  it  any  of  these  things  that  we  have 
been  dealing  with  ?  Can  we  believe  that  the 
real  God  of  the  real  universe,  infinite  and 
eternal,  cares  for  these  little,  petty,  childish 
affairs  ? 

There  are  two  or  three  things  still  held, — 
at  least  in  some  sections  of  the  Church, — 
which  are  old  relics  of  paganism,  and  which 
are  so  important  that  it  seems  to  me  worth 
while  for  a  moment  just  to  point  them  out.  I 
do  not  desire  to  cultivate  in  your  minds  — 
which  have  rejected  these  things — a  sense  of 
superiority  over  your  brethren.  I  would  not 
have  you  look  down  upon  somebody  who  still 
holds — for  he  may  be  noble  in  heart — a  bar- 


1 76  Worship 

baric  idea  of  worship.  For  God,  I  beHeve, 
accepts  the  sincere  soul,  whatever  the  form  of 
his  service  may  be, — however  irrational,  how- 
ever barbaric, — more  readily  than  He  accepts 
the  clearest-headed  thinker  of  the  modern 
world  who  is  not  deep  down  in  his  heart  a 
true  and  noble  worshipper. 

One  of  these  ideas  is  that  a  thing  is  sacred 
merely  because  It  is  old.  If  you  should  go 
back  and  converse  with  an  old-time  Greek, 
when  he  wished  to  say  that  a  certain  thing  was 
sacred  in  his  estimation,  he  would  use  this 
phrase,  "  Such  a  thing  is  old  to  me."  "  Old  " 
and  "  sacred  "  were  identical.  There  are  thou- 
sands of  people  in  the  churches  of  Christen- 
dom to-day,  who  unthinkingly,  are  inclined  to 
worship  and  bow  down  to  whatever  is  old.  It 
may  be  true  and  be  old  :  it  cannot  be  true  be- 
cause it  is  old.  It  is  not  necessarily  true  be- 
cause it  is  new  ;  but  it  is  the  true  and  the 
real,  the  expression  of  the  divine  in  the  uni- 
verse and  in  life,  which  we  wish  to  find ; 
neither  the  old  nor  the  new. 

There  is  another  thing  already  referred  to, 
— the  conception  that  we  need  somebody  to 
intercede  for  us  with  the  Father,  that  we  need 
a  favourite  in  heaven  who  can  get  God  by  his 
persuasion  to  be  kind  to  us.    This  is  barbarism 


Worship  177 

pure  and  simple.  It  sprung  out  of  the  uni- 
versal experience  of  the  ancient  world  with 
their  chieftains.  You  go  to  Turkey  to-day  ; 
and  if  you  can  get  the  ear  of  the  vizier,  the 
prime  favourite  of  the  Sultan,  you  may  win 
almost  any  favour.  You  can  get  almost  any- 
thing of  any  king  in  Christendom  if  you  can 
get  the  ear  of  the  court  favourite.  And  so 
people  have  applied  this  idea  to  God,  and  said, 
"If  we  can  only  get  somebody  to  plead  with 
Him  for  us,  then  He  will  be  kind." 

Jesus  teaches  another  idea.  God  is  the  uni- 
versal Father  of  us  all,  and  loves  us  and  will 
help  us.  God  will  do  right  because  He  is  God 
and  w^e  are  His  children.  There  need  be  no 
other  reason. 

Then  there  remains  in  one  of  the  greatest 
churches  in  Christendom  a  relic  of  barbarism 
that  it  seems  to  me  would  be  revolting  to  the 
worshippers  themselves  if  they  should  stop  to 
think  of  its  origin  and  meaning.  I  refer  to  the 
thought  that  people  are  to  be  saved  by  eating 
and  drinking  the  body  and  blood  of  God.  The 
old  barbarians  believed  that  if  they  could  tear 
out  the  heart  of  a  tiger  after  they  killed  him 
and  eat  it,  they  would  partake  of  his  qualities 
of  ferocity  and  power.  If  they  could  eat  the 
heart  of  an  enemy  who  was  very  brave  and 


1 78  Worship 

strong,  they  beheved  they  would  come  into 
possession  of  the  quaHties  he  possessed.  And 
here,  intruding  itself  on  the  very  altars  of  our 
worship  of  the  Supreme,  is  this  barbarism,  not 
yet  outgrown  by  the  civilisation  of  the  world, 
— that  we  may  come  to  God  through  the  ma- 
terial eating  of  something  and  drinking  some- 
thing with  these  human  fleshly  bodies.  Is  that 
the  way  to  become  partakers  of  the  divine  na- 
ture? This  is  "  materialism"  of  the  grossest  sort. 

And  so  there  are  many  elements,  if  I  had 
time  to  go  over  them,  that  are  survivals  of  the 
old  paganism  still  remaining  imbedded  in  the 
strata  that  human  custom  has  laid  down  as 
the  ages  have  gone  by. 

There  is  a  certain  class  of  mind  that  revolts 
as  it  makes  a  study  of  the  old  ideas  that  have 
prevailed  in  worship,  and  comes  to  wonder 
whether  worship  itself  is  an  ennobling  thing, 
whether  it  be  not  humiliating  to  bend  and  bow 
and  kneel  in  the  presence  of  any  one.  And, 
then,  in  this  modern  world,  on  the  part  of 
those  who  have  studied  modern  science,  and 
have  become  overwhelmed  with  the  thought  of 
the  mao-nificence  of  the  material  universe  and 
the  unchan^eableness  of  the  laws  accordino;  to 
which  it  is  governed,  there  are  those  who  won- 
der whether  there  is  left  any  place  for  worship. 


Worship  1 79 

Let  us  turn  now,  and  consider  what  is  essen- 
tial in  worship  and  what  are  tlic  impHcations  of 
worship  as  bearing  on  the  nature  of  the  wor- 
shipper. Do  we  degrade  ourselves  in  bend- 
ing in  the  presence  of  the  Supreme  ?  As 
Browning  expresses  it  in  that  wonderful  poem 
"Saul," 

"With  that  stoop  of  the  soul  which,  in  bending,  up- 
raises it  too," 

are  we  not  higher  and  nobler  when  we  are 
bent  in  the  presence  of  the  Divine  ? 

We  decide  the  rank  of  any  being  by  the 
question  whether  there  is  in  that  being  the 
possibility  of  worship.  For  what  is  worship  ? 
If  we  analyse  it  carefully,  we  shall  find  that  it 
is  not  of  necessity  in  any  of  these  things  which 
I  have  been  dealing  with  so  far,  though  it  may 
be  in  any  or  all  of  them.  It  is  an  attitude  of 
the  soul ;  it  is  an  exercise  of  mind  and  heart 
and  spirit.  When  you  analyse  worship,  you 
find  that  the  essence  of  it  is  in  the  one  word 
"  admiration."  The  man  who  admires,  the 
being  who  admires, — that  is,  wonders, — looks 
up  with  adoration  towards  something  which  he 
thinks  of  as  above  him,  —  that  man  or  being  is 
a  worshipper. 

Why  is  it  that  in   om*  ordinary,  every-day 


i8o  Worship 

life  we  think  of  the  dog  as  perhaps  in  some 
ways  the  noblest  of  animals,  the  nearest  to 
ourselves  ?  Because  there  is  in  the  dog  this 
capacity  to  come  into  personal  relationship 
with  a  being  above  himself,  to  look  up  to  that 
being  with  at  least  the  instinctive  movements 
of  reverence,  of  wonder,  of  admiration,  of  love, 
so  that  the  nature  of  the  dog  becomes  lifted 
through  this  worshipping  attitude  towards  his 
master. 

Some  years  ago  an  Indian  chief  came  on  to 
Washington  to  plead  with  the  Great  Father 
there  for  something  which  he  desired ;  and 
while  he  was  talking  with  a  gentleman,  one 
day,  he  was  asked  what  it  was  that  he  had 
seen  in  his  visit  to  the  East  which  impressed 
him  the  most.  And  he  said  at  once,  "  The 
bridge  across  the  Mississippi  at  St.  Louis." 
He  had  not  seen  the  Brooklyn  Bridge.  Per- 
haps he  would  have  chosen  that  if  he  had. 
And  the  man  said,  "  Are  you  not  surprised  at 
the  great  buildings  at  Washington,  the  Capi- 
tol, the  Treasury,  the  monuments  ?"  And  he 
said,  "Yes,  but  my  people  can  pile  stones  on 
top  of  each  other  ;  but  they  cannot  make  a 
cobweb  of  steel  hang  in  the  air."  Here  was  a 
recognition  oh  the  part  of  this  Indian,  of  the 
mystery,  the  marvel  and  wonder  of  a  civilisa- 


Worship  i8i 

tion  that  was  above  and  beyojid  anything;-  that 
his  people  had  attained. 

But  right  in  that  fact,  that  he  could  be 
touched  with  mystery  and  wonder  and  admira- 
tion, the  student  of  human  progress  recognises 
the  possibility  of  his  doing  like  deeds  by  and 
by.  There  w^s  in  him  the  ability  to  be  devel- 
oped into  the  creator  of  these  great  wonders 
that  could  touch  him  thus  with  admiration. 

If  you  find  a  being  anywhere  on  the  face  of 
the  earth,  who  has  no  curiosity,  no  capacity  for 
wonder,  who  never  expresses  surprise,  who 
does  not  admire  anything, — I  care  not  whether 
he  is  a  wealthy,  worn-out  modern  or  an  unde- 
veloped barbarian — you  will  find  a  very  low 
o^rade  of  civilisation.  He  will  be  without  the 
possibility  of  coming  to  anything  noble  or 
high. 

The  next  quality  that  I  need  to  notice  in 
this  matter  of  worship,  and  that  makes  it  so 
important  for  us  to  cultivate,  is  that  the  wor- 
shipper always  tends  to  become  transformed 
into  the  likeness  of  that  which  he  admires.  It 
is  said  that  Alexander  the  Great  carried  with 
him  always  a  copy  of  Homer's  Iliad,  and  that 
the  one  orreat  admiration  of  his  life  was  the 
famous  old  Greek  warrior  of  Troy,  Achilles. 
And    this    admiration    tended    perpetually   to 


I»2 


Worship 


transform  the  character  of  Alexander  into  the 
likeness  of  the  old  Greek  hero.  We  inevitably 
absorb  the  qualities  that  we  love  and  admire. 
We  inevitably  become  made  over  into  the 
likeness  of  those  beings  whom  we  chiefly  care 
for. 

You  have  friends  that  you  love  and  worship. 
You  have  memories  of  the  dead  that  you  carry 
ever  enshrined  in  your  hearts.  They  are  the 
noblest  people,  perhaps,  that  you  have  ever 
known.  They  are  enthroned  in  your  admira- 
tion ;  and,  gradually,  you  are  being  transformed 
into  the  likeness  of  these.  This  power  works 
according  to  this  law,  inevitably.  You  may  go 
through  all  the  outward  forms  of  worship  ;  you 
may  bend  your  head  or  your  knees  in  church 
service  ever  so  many  times  during  the  week ; 
you  may  engage  in  rituals  or  services  of  any 
kind,  no  matter  what ;  but  you  are  really  being 
made  over  by  your  admirations.  If  you  go 
through  formal  services,  and  you  love  and  ad- 
mire something  else,  you  are  being  transformed 
into  the  object  that  you  admire.  You  may 
have  the  word  of  divine  worship  upon  your 
lips  ;  but  the  power  is  in  that  which  you  love 
in  your  hearty 

Another  point.     Only  the  worshippers  of  the 
world  have  in  them  the  power  of  growth.     It 


Worship  I  S3 

is  the  people  who  are  haunted  by  this  unattain- 
able ideal  who  make  advances.  When  they 
climb  to  one  level,  the  ideal  still  leads  them  on, 
and  they  strive  after  its  attainment.  And  so 
it  is  the  worshipper,  and  the  worshipper  alone, 
who  has  in  him  the  power  and  potency  of  un- 
foldinor  all  that  is  hicrhest  and  finest  and  noblest 
in  human  natiti'e. 

This  is  the  reason  why  we  have  hope  for 
those  who  have  chosen  as  their  heroic  charac- 
ters the  noblest  and  greatest  men  of  the  world. 
So  long  as  France,  for  example,  chiefly  admires 
Napoleon,  so  long  there  is  no  hope  for  the 
redemption,  the  uplifting,  the  deliverance  of 
France.  So  louQf  as  we  admire  men  like  Wash- 
ington,  like  Lincoln,  counting  them  the  chiefest 
heroes  of  our  national  history,  so  long  there  is 
in  us  the  potency  and  power  of  developing  into 
the  likeness  of  these  heroic,  these  noble  char- 
acters. 

If  you  find  an  artist  who  thinks  he  can  paint 
perfectly,  there  is  no  possibility  of  his  becom- 
ing a  great  painter.  If  he  can  bend  himself, 
his  soul,  in  reverence  before  the  Sistine  Ma- 
donna, before  the  creations  of  the  masters,  new 
or  old,  and  feel  that  they  transcend  all  the 
power  of  his  exertions  so  far,  and  be  lifted  to 
seek   after   those    qualities    that   make    them 


184  Worship 

supreme,  then  there  is  a  chance  for  him  to  be- 
come a  great  artist.  If  men  admire  the  truth- 
seekers,  the  leaders,  the  lovers,  the  servants  of 
the  race  ;  if  women  admire  such  characters  as 
Florence  Nightingale,  Dorothea  Dix,  —  the 
women  who  have  rendered  the  greatest  services 
in  the  past, — this  worship  has  in  it  the  power 
to  lift  them  up  and  lead  them  on  to  the  ac- 
complishment of  similar  deeds.  Admiration  is 
the  condition  of  all  that  is  hifrhest  and  best  in 

o 

human  life. 

We  need  to  consider  now  for  a  moment  the 
hopeful  fact  that  there  are  more  worshippers, 
and  more  worshippers  of  God,  than  we  are  com- 
monly apt  to  imagine,  particularly  if  we  limit 
our  conception  of  God  and  our  conception  of 
worship  to  the  creeds  and  customs  of  our  own 
churches.  Let  us  see,  then,  who  are  the  real 
worshippers  of  the  world. 

They  are  those,  as  we  have  already  said, 
who  admire  ;  and,  if  they  admire  anything  that 
is  noble,  they  are  of  necessity  worshippers  of 
God,  whether  they  think  it  themselves  or  not ; 
for  God  is  the  one  and  only  source  of  all  that 
Is  noble  and  fair  and  supreme.  Take  the  wor- 
shippers of  natural  beauty,  for  example, — 
Wordsworth, 'or  even  Byron.  We  are  not  ac- 
customed to  think  of  the  latter  as  having  a  re- 


Worship  '     185 

ligious  nature  ;  but  some  of  the  finest  bursts 
of  admiration  for  the  beauty 'of  the  world  to 
be  found  in  the  poetry  of  England  are  in  his 
works.  Any  one  who  admires  natural  beauty, 
who  is  touched  by  a  flower,  whose  tears  start 
when  he  listens  to  the  music  of  the  wind  in  the 
trees,  who  is  awed  and  thrilled  by  the  stars  in 
the  night  heavens,  who  is  uplifted  in  the  pres- 
ence of  mountains,  who  is  stirred  by  the  music 
of  the  waves  upon  the  seashore,  any  man  who 
thus  loves  and  admires  natural  beauty  is  a  wor- 
shipper of  God  ;  for  that,  as  far  as  it  goes,  is 
an  expression  of  the  thought  and  the  life  and 
the  beauty  of  God. 

Then,  if  you  are  a  worshipper  of  artistic 
beauty, — pictures,  sculpture  ;  if  you  are  touched 
and  thrilled  by  music, — you  are  worshippers  to 
this  extent ;  for  these,  again,  are,  so  far  as  they 
go,  manifestations  of  that  which  is  divine. 

Suppose  you  are  a  worshipper  of  truth. 
This  worship  of  truth  is  one  of  the  most  mod- 
ern of  all  characteristics, — care  for  truth,  truth 
as  such,  truth  wherever  it  leads,  belief  in  truth 
as  from  God,  as  supremely  from  Him,  and 
only  from  Him.  This  is  a  very  modern  char- 
acteristic. So  I  love  to  believe  that  Huxley, 
though  not  a  worshipper  of  God  in  the  popu- 
lar sense,  though  he  would  not  say  really  that 


1 86  Worship 

he  beheved  in  God,  counting  himself  an  ag- 
nostic, was  one  of  the  devoutest  of  the  modern 
worshippers  of  God  ;  for  there  has  never  hved 
a  man  with  a  siipremer  care  for  truth,  as  he, 
according  to  his  methods,  was  able  to  discern 
and  demonstrate  it.  He  cared  so  much  for 
truth  that  in  the  presence  of  death  itself  he 
would  not  allow  himself  to  be  comforted  with 
any  consolation  for  which  he  could  not  bring 
the  defence  of  his  reason,  as  he  was  accustomed 
to  use  it.  He  said :  "  I  may  not  have  com- 
fort,"— of  course  I  am  only  quoting  the  idea, — 
"  I  may  walk  in  darkness,  I  may  go  out  into  the 
unknown,  not  knowing  whither  I  go.  I  may 
not  feel  at  all  certain  that  God  is  guiding  me 
or  that  He  cares  for  me.  But  I  will  be  true 
to  myself  :  I  will  not  lie."  He  was  grandly 
true,  then,  to  what  he  regarded  as  the  truth. 
And,  since  God  is  truth,  and  truth  is  one  great 
manifestation  of  God,  he  was  nobly  faithful  to 
so  much  as  he  could  see  of  God.  So  far  as  he 
went,  therefore,  Huxley  was  a  devout  wor- 
shipper of  God. 

Take  an  illustration  in  another  direction,— 
Charles  Sumner.  We  all  grant  that  he  was 
one  of  the  noblest  men  that  ever  lived.  When 
some  one  asked  him  about  the  two  command- 
ments  of  love   to  God  and  love  to  men,  he 


Worship  187 

frankly  said  :  "  I  am  not  sure  tjiat  I  know  any- 
thing about  the  first ;  but  I  have  tried  to  keep 
the  second." 

These,  then,  wlio  are  devoted  to  the  service 
of  man,  who  care  for  human  welfare,  human 
progress,  human  advance,  who  try  to  lift  off 
human  burden^,  break  human  bonds  and  set 
the  world  free, — these  men,  whatever  their 
theological  ideas,  are  worshippers  of  God. 

So  we  may  say  of  those  who  have  had  a 
supreme  care  for  righteousness,  that  the  world 
should  be  right  at  any  cost,  though  the  heav- 
ens might  fall, — these  men,  whatever  their 
theological  ideas,  have  been  worshippers  of 
God.  It  is  said  that  Wilberforce,  who  was 
the  master  leader  in  the  abolition  of  slavery  in 
the  English  colonies,  was  so  absorbed  in  his 
work  that,  when  some  zealous  religionist 
asked  him  one  day  if  his  soul  was  saved,  he 
said  he  had  been  so  interested  in  carrying  on 
this  great  life-work  of  benefiting  the  world 
that  he  had  not  stopped  to  find  out  whether  he 
had  a  soul.  Truly,  a  man  like  that  was  a 
worshipper  of  God. 

And  so  in  every  nation,  in  all  ages,  under 
every  sky,  men  have  worshipped  beauty  or 
truth  or  the  ideals  of  human  service,  of  human 
goodness  ;  and  loving  thus  the  high  and  fme 


1 88  Worship 

things  which  are  the  manifestations  of  God, 
they  are  then  worshippers.  And  whether 
they  are  in  the  woods  with  Bryant,  who  says 
that  the  woods  were  God's  first  temples; 
whether  they  are  in  some  pagan  temple  and 
have  never  heard  of  our  religion  ;  whether 
they  are  in  Rome  in  St.  Peter's  ;  whether  they 
are  in  a  Quaker  meeting-house,  where  the  form 
of  worship  is  so  simple  that  often  it  consists  of 
sitting  and  waiting  for  the  moving  of  the  Spirit, 
— wherever  they  are,  if  they  admire  whatever 
is  lovely,  true,  and  noble,  and  are  lifted  and 
moved  by  a  desire  to  help  on  and  benefit  the 
world, — these  are  the  true  worshippers  of  Him 
who  is  Spirit,  and  who  desires  to  be  worshipped 
in  spirit  and  in  truth. 

But,  while  they  who  admire  beauty  or  truth, 
they  who  are  awed  by  mystery  or  lifted  by 
music,  they  who  admire  heroic  deeds  or  con- 
secrate themselves  to  human  service, — while 
these  are  true  worshippers  of  God,  and  far 
above  those  who  are  punctilious  in  ceremonial 
while  lacking  the  love  which  is  the  great  essen- 
tial, there  is  one  thing  which  is  better  yet. 
These  admirers  of  the  external  manifestations 
of  the  Divine  may  be  only  in  the  outer  courts 
of  the  temple.  There  is  an  inner  holy  of 
holies,  into  which  the  great  spiritual  leaders  of 


Worship  '      189 

the  race  have  shown  a  way.  Blessed  are  they 
who  find  the  door,  and  are  admitted  to  the 
presence  chamber  of  the  Kini^, — better  yet, 
who  are  folded  close  to  the  loving  heart  of 
the  Father. 


> 


IX 

PRAYER 

TTHE  change  in  thought  and  theory  which 
*  is  compelled  by  the  moral  and  intellectual 
advancement  of  the  world  finds  one  of  its  best 
illustrations  in  the  matter  of  prayer.  In  the 
childhood  of  the  race,  prayer  was  the  most  nat- 
ural and  simple  thing  in  the  world.  There 
were  in  the  thought  of  the  people  many  gods 
with  different  dispositions  and  different  degrees 
of  power  ;  but,  so  far  as  they  were  able  to 
accomplish  the  things  which  their  worshippers 
desired,  prayer  to  them  for  these  things  was 
common  and  unquestioned. 

They  were  looked  upon  —  these  invisible 
potentates  ^— very  much  as  were  the  visible 
chiefs  and  kings.  They  could  not  do  every- 
thing, and  opposing  chiefs  and  kings  might 
stand  in  the  way  of  the  things  they  really  de- 
sired to  do  ;  but  they  could  be  approached, 
they  could  be'petitioned.  If  you  brought  an 
acceptable  gift  in  your  hand,  if  you  happened 

igo 


Prayer  191 

to  find  the  tribal  g-od  in  a  favqurable  mood  of 
mind,  if  you  could  approach  him  through  some 
favourite,  some  mediator  who  had  always  access 
to  him,  if  you  could  come  in  the  right  way  and 
at  the  right  time,  it  was  the  most  natural  thing 
in  the  world  that  your  petitions  should  be 
answered,  and  the  gifts  you  desired  bestowed 
upon  you. 

And  when,  in  the  course  of  human  civilisa- 
tion, the  most  advanced  races  came  to  be  be- 
lievers in  only  one  God,  the  conditions  were 
not  very  much  changed.  God  was  a  being  not 
very  far  away,  sitting  on  a  throne  surrounded 
by  a  court,  attended  by  a  retinue  of  angels 
ready  to  go  on  any  mission  on  which  He  might 
choose  to  send  them ;  and  it  was  very  easy  to 
ask  Him  for  whatever  you  might  desire. 

But  here  again,  as  in  the  case  of  the  old-time 
polytheists,  you  could  not  always  be  sure  of 
having  your  petition  heard  or  of  having  your 
request  granted.  You  must  come  to  God  in 
the  definitely  appointed  way.  You  must  bring 
an  acceptable  gift ;  for  this  idea  was  not  out- 
grown in  the  old  Hebrew  days  when  the 
prophets  told  the  people  that  their  prayers 
were  not  answered  because  they  had  not 
brouorht  the  tithes  into  the  storehouse.  There 
were  ways  of  appealing  to  Him  that  were  more 


192  Prayer 

likely  to  succeed  than  others.  You  must  ap- 
proach Him  in  a  definite  frame  of  mind.  You 
must  have  faith.  You  must  be  earnest  enough. 
You  must  continue  tireless  in  your  petition. 
You  must  come  by  way  of  some  mediator, — 
some  favourite  who  was  supposed  to  have  the 
ear  of  God  at  all  times.  If  you  did  this,  you 
might  expect  an  answer  to  your  prayer.  And 
if,  as  was  too  frequently  the  case,  the  prayers 
were  not  answered  in  the  way  in  which  the 
petitioner  desired,  it  was  easy  enough  to  find 
for  it  a  reason  without  discrediting  the  efficacy 
of  prayer  itself. 

There  was  not  a  great  deal  of  change  in  the 
theories  of  men  in  regard  to  this  matter  from 
the  old  days  of  polytheism,  even  after  the  belief 
in  one  God  came  to  be  the  practically  universal 
one  among  civilised  nations.  Among  our  own 
ancestors  here  in  this  country,  within  two  hun- 
dred— may  we  not  say  within  one  hundred — 
years,  practically  the  same  ideas  prevailed. 
God  could  .be  petitioned  for  rain  with  the  ex- 
pectation that  the  rain  would  come.  We 
could  ask  Him  to  give  us  prosperous  seasons^ 
— that  the  crops  in  the  fields  might  grow,  that 
they  might  come  to  their  harvest.  If  a  friend 
was  going  to  sea,  it  was  believed  that  prayer 
would  have  some  definite  effect  upon  his  safety 


Prayer  193 

as  he  went  in  his  ship  down^  into  the  great 
waters.  If  a  friend  started  off  on  a  land  jour- 
ney, prayer  in  some  mysterious  way  miglit 
touch  the  question  of  his  safety  there.  If  a 
friend  was  sick,  prayer  was  beheved  to  have 
power  to  cure  disease  ;  or,  at  any  rate,  prayer 
could  touch  the  one  Power  who  held  in  His 
hand  all  the  issues  of  life.  And  if  we  prayed 
in  the  right  way,  with  the  right  spirit,  and  per- 
sistently enough,  it  was  supposed  that  almost 
anything  might  be  accomplished. 

And  why  not  ?  The  universe  for  hundreds 
of  years  after  Christiainty  began  its  career  of 
conquest  over  the  civilised  world  was  a  very 
small  affair.  Up  to  within  four  hundred  years  it 
was  no  larger  than  what  we  think  of  our  solar 
system  as  being  to-day.  It  was  only  a  little 
way  above  the  blue  that  the  heavenly  court  was 
situated.  And  there  was  no  reason,  that  the 
people  were  acquainted  with,  why  God,  at  the 
request  of  one  of  His  children,  should  not  make 
almost  anything  come  to  pass  that  might  be 
desired. 

God  was  outside  the  universe  and  stood  in 
such  a  relation  to  it  as  that  in  which  a  king 
stands  to  his  kingdom.  He  could  issue  an 
edict,  and  have  His  will  carried  out.  There 
was   no    popular    knowledge   of    nature   and 


194  Prayer 

natural  law  that  made  this  seem  difficult  or  un- 
reasonable. This  was  the  condition  of  things, 
practically,  till  within  a  hundred  years. 

It  is  true  that  the  old  Ptolemaic  system 
passed  away,  and  the  Copernican  slowly  took 
its  place  in  the  thoughts  and  imaginations  of 
men  ;  and  it  is  true  that  the  priests  of  the 
Catholic  Church,  and  the  ministers  in  the  Pro- 
testant, began  to  be  troubled  by  the  begin- 
nings of  scientific  thought.  When  Kepler 
discovered  the  laws  of  planetary  motion,  when 
Newton  discovered  the  laws  of  gravity,  there 
were  those  who  raised  the  alarm  and  said  that 
these  scientific  men  were  taking  the  world  out 
of  the  hands  of  God  and  putting  it  into  the 
keeping  of  a  law.  They  had  the  feeling  that 
somehow  or  other  barriers  were  being  raised 
between  them  and  their  heavenly  Father,  and 
that  henceforth  communication  and  the  answer 
to  prayer  might  be  more  difficult  than  it  had 
previously  been.  But  until  within  compara- 
tively recent  years,  any  and  all  difficulties  of 
this  sort  were  very  few  and  troubled  not  many 
minds. 

But  two  great  things  have  happened  within 
a  hundred  years.  The  world  has  waked  up  to 
such  moral  and  spiritual  and  humane  thoughts 
about  God  as  have  not  previously  prevailed  ; 


Prayer  195 

and  then  a  new  scientific  revolution  in  our 
thought  about  the  universe  has  taken  place. 
These  two  things  have  raised  a  host  of  diffi- 
culties in  the  popular  mind  concerning  the 
possible  efficacy  of  prayer. 

Let  us  first  deal  with  the  moral  difficulties 
for  a  moment.  Perhaps  I  shall  be  speaking 
for  others  if  I  speak  of  experiences  I  have 
passed  through  myself.  The  first  difficulties  I 
ever  had  with  prayer  were  not  scientific  ones. 
I  began  to  raise  questions  like  this.  I  said, 
"  What  is  the  use  of  my  elaborately  telling- 
God  a  thousand  things  which  He  knows  better 
than  I  do  ? "  That  was  one  difficulty.  Then 
I  said  :  "  God  is  at  least  as  good  as  the  best 
men  that  we  know.  He  must  be  infinitely 
good  if  He  is  God.  Why,  then,  should  I 
plead  with  Him,  beg  of  Him  to  be  good,  try 
to  persuade  Him  to  be  kind  to  me,  to  give  me 
the  things  that  I  need  ? "  This  difficulty  be- 
came almost  insurmountable  to  me. 

And  then  as  I  looked  over  the  world  and 
thought  of  praying  for  the  world's  salvation,  I 
was  taught,  on  the  one  hand,  that  the  number 
of  those  who  were  going  to  be  saved  was  defi- 
nitely fixed  before  the  foundation  of  the  world  ; 
and  I  wondered,  if  that  were  true,  how  my 
prayer  was  going  to  affect  the  matter  any.   On 


196  Prayer 

the  other  hand,  I  was  told  that  all  men  were 
perfectly  free  to  accept  the  salvation  if  they 
would.  I  was  told  that  this  freedom  of  the 
will  was  such  that  a  man  might  defy  the 
Omnipotent  if  he  chose,  forever.  So  I  said 
to  myself,  "  If  he  can  and  if  he  chooses  to, 
and  if  God  even  cannot  move  him,  why  should 
I  pray  to  God  to  move  him  ? " 

Difficulties  like  these  were  the  ones  that 
pressed  upon  me  first  and  most  heavily.  I  be- 
gan to  feel  that  the  kind  of  prayer-meeting  in 
which  I  had  been  trained  as  a  young  man  pre- 
sented more  difficulties  to  the  religious  life 
than  it  did  help.  I  used  to  go  as  a  boy  to  one 
of  these  meetings,  and  have  it  proved  to  me 
conclusively  from  Scripture  that  thousands 
and  millions  of  souls  were  going  every  year  to 
perdition  because  people  in  small  country 
towns  here  in  America — on  another  continent 
—  did  not  pray  to  God  hard  enough  to  save 
them.  It  seemed  unjust  to  me  that  salvation 
should  hano;  on  such  a  condition. 

I  used  to  hear  a  man  in  the  prayer-meeting, 
when  I  was  young,  say  over  and  over  again  in. 
his  prayers,  "  It  is  time  for  Thee,  O  Lord,  to 
work,"  —  the  impression  being  made  in  my 
youthful  mind  that  if  God  could  only  be  roused 
and  got  to  be  interested  in  it  as  we  were,  some- 


Prayer  197 

thing  might  be  accomplished.^  I  came  to  feel 
that  those  prayer-meetings  bordered  closely 
on  irreverence  instead  of  piety,  and  that  this 
besieging  God,  begging  Him  to  be  good,  beg- 
ging Him  to  save  the  souls  of  His  Own  children, 
was  not  the  highest  kind  of  trust  and  piety. 
That  kind  of  prayer,  that  way  of  looking  at 
prayer,  troubled  me  ;  and  I  confess  I  have 
never  been  able  to  see  a  solution  of  that  diffi- 
culty except  the  belief  that  God,  the  perfect, 
loving,  tender,  true  Father,  will  do  somehow, 
somewhen,  somewhere,  all  that  is  best  and 
noblest  for  all  His  children. 

Then  there  sprung  up  no  end  of  scientific 
difficulties.  We  have  come  to  hold  a  new  con- 
ception of  the  universe.  We  have  found  that 
nature  is  a  perfect  order,  that  everything  works 
in  accordance  with — so  far  as  we  can  see — 
unchanging  law. 

And  so  the  religious  world  has  been  per- 
plexed by  the  difficulties  that  spring  out  of  this 
great  discovery.  There  is  no  question  as  to 
the  fact,  it  seems  to  me,  any  longer.  The 
greatest  scientific  minds  of  the  world  tell  us 
that  they  find  no  tiniest  corner  of  this  infinite 
universe  where  there  is  chaos  or  disorder. 
Everything  is  working  in  accordance  with  un- 
chanorino-  methods  which  we  call  laws. 


1 98  Prayer 

Now,  then,  let  us  face  this  fact  for  a  mo- 
ment. Do  not  be  troubled  by  the  negative 
side.  Wait  till  I  get  through  with  it.  Let  us 
face  this  fact  for  a  moment,  and  see  where  we 
are.  Suppose  I  pray  for  rain.  Do  I  appre- 
ciate what  it  means  ?  To  add  to  or  take  away 
from  the  atmospheric  condition  overhanging 
the  city  of  New  York  to-day  by  one  tiniest 
particle  of  moisture  would  be  as  much  a  mira- 
cle as  though  I  expected  by  a  prayer  to  hurl 
the  Catskills  into  the  middle  of  the  Atlantic 
Ocean.  A  chain  of  cause  and  effect  runs  back 
to  the  very  beginning  of  time  and  on  to  the 
very  end ;  and  these  atmospheric  conditions 
are  links  in  that  chain. 

Suppose  I  ask  God  to  guard  the  safety  of  a 
friend  who  is  in  mid-Atlantic  on  an  ocean 
steamer.  Is  there  any  conceivable  relation  — 
I  ask  you  to  think  carefully — between  a  verbal 
request  of  that  sort  and  the  weather  on  the 
Atlantic,  on  the  condition  of  the  ship,  the  way 
in  which  it- was  built,  the  competence  of  the 
commander,  the  order  of  the  crew,  the  condi- 
tions on  which  safety  depends  ?  Would  my 
prayer  move  an  iceberg  out  of  its  course  or 
change  the  sailing  of  the  ship  ?  Do  we  to- 
day, any  of  us,  conceive  a  possible  causal  rela- 
tion of  that  sort  ? 


Prayer  '       199 

Suppose  that  I  should,  being  a  farmer,  wish 
my  potatoes  or  wheat  to  grow.  Now  what  is 
it  that  makes  potatoes  and  wheat  grow?  In 
the  first  place,  good  seed  ;  next,  good  soil, 
fertilisers,  a  proper  quantity  of  rain,  sunshine, 
—  all  these  conditions.  Is  there  any  conceiv- 
able relation  between  a  prayer  and  a  change  of 
these  physic^  conditions  of  earth  and  air  ? 
Do  we  not,  all  of  us,  feel  that  we  cannot  find 
anywhere  in  these  a  place  to  put  a  petition  as 
a  causative  force  ? 

So  in  any  department  of  nature — it  makes 
no  difference  where  we  turn  —  are  we  not  con- 
fronted by  similar  facts  ?  Suppose  a  friend 
has  started  across  the  continent  on  a  railway 
train  ;  and  somewhere  there  is  a  bridge  which 
the  engineer  did  not  build  as  he  ought  to  have 
done.  He  put  in  poor  material,  or  some  of 
the  timbers  have  decayed  since  the  bridge  was 
built.  It  has  not  been  properly  inspected. 
The  desire  of  the  corporation  to  make  as  much 
money  as  possible  has  kept  it  from  making 
needed  repairs.  Now  is  there  any  relation  be- 
tween my  prayer  and  a  rotten  timber  or  ;i 
cracked  bit  of  steel  or  iron  ?  So  in  case  of  ill- 
ness. My  friend  is  sick.  I  stand  by  his  bed- 
side, and  see  him  suffer.  Perhaps  the  last  few 
moments  have  come  ;  and  I  watch  the  lessening 


200 


Prayer 


breath,  and  my  heart  cries  out  for  help.  I 
would  give  my  life  if  he  might  live  ;  but  are 
not  these  physical  bodies  of  ours  under  the  in- 
exorable law  of  cause  and  effect,  exactly  like 
railway  bridges,  ocean  steamers,  and  crops  of 
wheat  ?  Is  there  any  relation  between  the 
utterance  of  my  wish  and  the  course  of  the 
disease  ? 

These  will  do  as  hints  of  the  difficulties  that 
confront  us  on  account  of  our  new  conception 
of  the  scientific  order  of  the  world.  But  so  long- 
as  God  was  conceived  of  as  beino-  outside  the 
universe,  as  one  who  had  made  it  as  a  man 
makes  a  machine,  it  was  easy  to  say  a  miracle 
might  be  wrought.  God  could  increase  the 
speed  with  which  the  machine  should  run,  pre- 
sumably, or  He  might  slow  it  up,  or  He  could 
break  through  and  cause  these  forces  that  are  at 
work  to  accomplish  results  that  they  would  not 
but  for  His  interference.  This  is  the  old  theory 
of  miracle,  which  was  believed  in  and  defended 
for  generations. 

They  said,  "  This  is  God's  universe  ;  and, 
suppose  it  is  a  great  mechanism,  cannot  He 
interfere  with  it,  and  make  it  do  things  that 
otherwise  would  not  have  been  done?"  Pre- 
sumably, He  might  do  it ;  and  yet  there  always 
remained  the  great  question  of  fact.     As  we 


Prayer  201 

studied  and  observed,  was  there  any  reason  to 
suppose  that  He  did  do  it  ?  Had  any  one  seen 
cases  in  which  it  had  been  done  ?  And  so  the 
human  heart  with  its  wishes  and  hopes,  was 
tlirown  back  upon  itself,  and  people  began  to 
feel  that  they  were  shut  away  from  the  Father 
in  heaven,  could  not  any  longer  approach  Him 
and  receive  H*is  help  and  care. 

But  now  we  are  gaining  a  new  thought 
about  the  universe  and  about  God's  relation  to 
it.  The  best  thinkers  of  the  modern  world  no 
longer  conceive  of  God  as  outside  the  universe, 
which  is  a  mechanism  which  He  has  made  and 
set  going,  and  with  which  presumably  He  might 
interfere  if  He  chose.  We  have  come  rather  to 
reeard  it  as  an  oro;anism,  as  alive  from  centre 
to  circumference,  and  God  as  its  life.  And  so 
this  order,  that  we  call  changeless  law,  is  only 
the  method  of  working  of  the  God  who  is  "  the 
same  yesterday,  to-day,  and  forever,  with  whom 
is  no  variableness,  neither  shadow  of  turning  "  ; 
and  we  trust  Him,  and  we  love  Him,  and  we  are 
able  to  live  hopefully  and  successfully  because 
there  is  no  change,  no  shadow  of  turning  with 
Him. 

Suppose,  for  a  moment,  that  this  order  were 
liable  to  be  interfered  with.  Do  you  not  see, 
will  you  not  look  into  it  far  enough  to  observe, 


202  Prayer 

that  it  would  turn  the  whole  world  into  a  mad- 
house ?  We  should  not  be  able  to  count  on 
anything.  Suppose  water  did  freeze  to-day  at 
32  degrees  Fahrenheit,  how  could  we  know  it 
would  freeze  at  the  same  temperature  to- 
morrow,— God  being  liable  to  interfere  ?  The 
only  way  by  which  we  can  learn  anything,  and 
lay  out  plans  for  the  future,  and  live  our  lives 
in  peace  and  trust  and  hope,  is  because  we  rest 
forever  on  the  certainty  that  God  does  not 
change. 

Now  all  these  movements  and  methods 
around  us  which  we  call  natural  forces  and 
natural  laws,  are  only  the  present  life  and  activ- 
ity of  God,  our  Father,  not  alone  in  heaven, 
but  here  upon  earth.  This  is  the  modern  con- 
ception of  the  relation  in  which  God  stands  to 
the  universe. 

But  this  only  intensifies  our  difficulty  in  one 
way.  We  cannot  conceive  of  God  as  undoing 
with  one  hand  what  He  is  all  the  time  doing 
with  the  other.  For  the  world-order  is  God's 
method,  not  a  machine  that  He  has  made  and 
put  away  from  Himself.  It  is  God,  right  here 
in  eternal  activity  ;  and  it  is  changeless — why  ? 
Because  the  first  time — if  we  could  conceive  a 
first  time  that  God  did  anything — He  would  do 
the  right  thing  ;  and  with  precisely  the  same 


Prayer  203 

conditions  He  could  not  do  a  different,  that  is, 
a  wrong  thing.  Changelessness  is  an  inevit- 
able inference  from  the  wisdom  and  goodness 
of  God. 

But  now  let  us  take  a  view  of  the  whole 
matter  that  goes  deeper  than  we  have  hitherto 
been  ;  and,  if  you  will  follow  me,  I  think  we 
may  find  that  all  our  difficulties  in  regard  to 
prayer  fade  away,  being  due  to  partial  concep- 
tions of  God's  truth  and  His  methods  of  work- 
ing- 
Let  us  take  an  illustration  as  a  hint  of  the 

great  truth  that  I  wish  to  make  clear,  if  I  can. 
Suppose  my  father  had  built  me  a  wonderful 
house,  and  then  he  had  hidden  himself, — you 
may  suppose  that  he  might  be  in  some  room 
of  the  house  inaccessible  to  me,  or  somewhere 
else.  He  has  built  me  a  wonderful  house,  and 
has  so  arranged  it  that,  as  I  make  my  home  in 
it,  I  can  touch  an  electric  button,  and  straight- 
way food,  whatever  I  may  desire,  is  furnished 
to  me.  I  touch  another  electric  button,  and  I 
have  drink  of  any  kind  I  may  wish.  I  touch 
another,  and  clothing  is  furnished  me.  I  touch 
still  a  fourth,  and  I  have  books.  I  touch  an- 
other and  music  delights  my  ear.  I  touch  an- 
other, and  beautiful  pictures  are  unfolded  be- 
fore  me.     So,  whatever  I  desire  I  have,   by 


204  Prayer 

complying  with  this  pre-estabHshed  and  change- 
less order,  this  condition  of  things. 

Now,  though  my  father  is  not  visible,  and 
though  I  gain  all  I  wish  only  by  means  of  this 
pre-established  order,  is  my  father  any  the  less 
the  one  who  gives  them  to  me  ?  And  do  I  get 
them  in  any  other  way  than  by  asking  for  them 
by  prayer  ?  Do  you  not  see  ?  We  all  pray  as 
much  as  did  primitive  man.  Every  man  alive 
prays  every  day  of  the  year  and  every  hour  of 
every  day  that  he  is  conscious.  He  cannot 
escape  praying  if  he  would  ;  for  what  is  the  es- 
sence of  prayer  ?  If  I  wish  a  thing,  I  am  pray- 
ing. If  I  aspire  towards  something  higher  and 
better  and  hope  for  it ;  if  I  reach  out  my  hand 
to  grasp  what  I  want, — I  pray  for  that  thing,  no 
matter  how  long  continued  my  search,  whatever 
methods  I  may  use.  Anything  that  I  strive  to 
attain  I  pray  for,  and  I  pray  to  God  for  it ;  for 
God  is  the  one  centre  and  source  of  all  the 
riches  that  this  universe  contains  of  every  kind, 
and  I  am  His  child.  So,  no  matter  through 
what  means  or  by  what  methods,  it  is  prayer  in 
essence  just  the  same  ;  only,  when  I  am  deal- 
ing with  this  lower  order  that  I  call  the  ma- 
terial,  I  must^  comply  with  the  conditions  that 
control  that  order. 

If  I  wish  my  potatoes  to  grow,  God  has  or- 


Prayer  205 

dained  this  universe  in  such  a  way  that  I  must 
comply  with  11  is  conditions  l"or  having  them 
grow  ;  and  those  conditions  are  not  a  verbal 
request, — that  is  all.  But,  in  raising  my  crop 
of  potatoes,  I  am  dealing  first-hand  with  God 
just  as  really  as  when  I  am  on  my  knees  and 
engaged  in  what  is  technically  called  "  prayer." 
We  must  redeem  our  thought  of  this  universe 
from  secularism,  and  realise  that  it  is  sacred  all 
through,  from  zenith  to  nadir,  —  sacred  all 
throuijh. 

Suppose  I  wish  to  cross  the  Atlantic  by  a 
ship.  Oh,  how  we  petty,  puny  human  beings 
do  boast  about  our  power  over  nature  !  What 
power  over  nature  do  we  possess  ?  We  talk 
about  wielding  the  lightnings,  compelling  the 
winds  to  be  our  servants.  What  do  we  do 
when  we  wish  to  cross  the  Atlantic  ?  We  con- 
struct a  ship  as  nearly  as  we  can,  after  ages  of 
the  most  careful  experience,  in  conformity  with 
the  laws  that  control  the  movement  of  a  ship 
at  sea ;  and,  just  in  so  far  as  we  are  able  to 
study  those  laws  carefully  and  comprehend 
them  and  obey  them,  just  in  so  far  God's  forces 
work  for  us,  God's  winds  blow  us  from  port  to 
port.  We  do  not  control  the  winds  ;  we  obey 
the  winds,  which  are  God's  present  power  in 
action. 


2o6  Prayer 

So,  if  it  is  a  steamship  ;  we  have  studied  for 
a  century  to  comprehend  in  some  small  degree 
the  laws  that  control  the  contraction  and  ex- 
pansion of  steam,  and  we  have  adapted  our 
machinery  to  this  force  ;  and  by  as  much  as 
we  have  comprehended,  and  by  as  much  as  we 
humbly  and  reverently  obey,  by  so  much  God 
in  the  steam  propels  our  engines  and  drives 
our  ship  in  the  face  of  wind  and  tide  from 
port  to  port.  It  is  God  doing  it  all  the  time  ; 
and  our  adapting  ourselves  to  the  laws  of 
God,  humbly  and  reverently  and  patiently  and 
persistently  asking  God  to  do  it, — that  is 
prayer  in  the  realm  where  steam  rules  or 
where  the  winds  control. 

Suppose  we  wish  to  build  a  factory  by  some 
mountain  stream.  Do  we  compel  the  water 
to  serve  us  ?  What  do  we  do  ?  We  study 
the  power  of  the  water ;  and  after  years  of 
experience  we  have  learned  that  the  man's 
mill  will  be  the  most  successful  one  that  is 
built  most  perfectly  to  accord  with  the  force 
of  the  water  as  it  runs  from  a  higher  level 
to  a  lower.  So,  if  we  ask  God  aright,  if  we. 
comply  with  the  changeless,  eternal  conditions, 
He  does  it ;  if  not.  He  does  not  do  it. 

So  in  every  department  of  human  life  ;  we 
may  call  it  ever  so  material,  we  stand  face  to 


Prayer  207 

face  with  the  eternal  God  of   this   universe  : 

» 

and  He  turns  every  wheel  for  us,  He  does  all 

the  things  that  we  boastfully  speak  of  as  our 
accomplishments.  We  talk  of  electricity  and 
of  illuminating  our  streets.  We  illuminate 
our  streets  if  we  obey  God  absolutely.  If 
there  is  a  flaw  in  that  obedience,  suddenly  we 
are  plunged  m  darkness  ;  and  the  light  does 
not  come  again  until  we  have  found  the  mis- 
take and  remedied  it, — obeyed  God  in  that 
department  of  His  working.  So  everywhere 
the  one  eternal  fact  of  prayer  faces  us,  and 
rules  us  in  every  department  of  human  life, 
in  every  department  of  human  activity  and 
achievement. 

Every  invention  is  a  prayer,  every  discovery 
is  a  prayer,  every  achievement  of  every  kind 
is  a  prayer.  We  send  our  trains  across  the 
plains,  our  ships  across  the  sea.  Our  machinery 
hums  under  the  influence  of  water  or  steam 
or  electric  power.  Our  streets  are  illuminated. 
All  these  things  are  accomplished  in  answer 
to  prayer, — prayer  to  the  universal  God,  ac- 
cording to  the  changeless  method  of  that 
department  of  His  universe  in  which  we  wish 
our  result. 

Is  prayer,  then,  something  likely  to  be  out- 
grown ?     Rather,  as  we  come  to  appreciate  it, 


2o8  Prayer 

do  we  find  that  we  are  unconsciously  obeying 
the  apostoHc  command,  "  Pray  without  ceas- 
ing "  ;  and  by  as  much  as  we  pray,  and  pray- 
wisely,  do  we  succeed  in  every  department 
of  human  life. 

But  now,  to  go  a  step  higher.  We  have 
found  that  this  is  prayer  in  the  material  ranges 
of  the  universe  ;  but  we  wish  moral  and 
spiritual  advantages.  How  shall  we  prosper 
here?  If  we  wish  to  develop  ourselves  as 
moral  beings,  to  transform  ourselves  until  we 
become  made  over  into  the  likeness  of  that 
which  is  noble  and  true  and  high  and  holy, 
we  must  obey  here  also  the  inexorable  laws. 
It  will  not  do  simply  to  ask  God  to  make  us 
good,  and  make  no  effort  ourselves  in  that 
direction.  If  we  wish  to  become  Sfood,  we 
study  the  great  characters  of  the  world  ;  and 
we  must  be  strenuous  in  our  efforts  to  over- 
come temptation,  to  climb  ever  from  higher 
heights  to  higher  heights  of  moral  and  spiritual 
achievement  Simply  words,  asking  God  are 
of  no  avail. 

And  here  let  me  say,  in  general,  that  if  we 
could  accomplish  results  we  desire  merely  by 
the  shaping  of  breath  into  words,  it  would 
result  in  the  demoralisation  of  the  world.  It 
would  be  a  premium  on  laziness  and  incapacity. 


Prayer  209 

Suppose  a  farmer  should  say  :  "  I  will  not 
cultivate  my  crops  ;  I  will  fean  comfortably 
over  the  fence,  and  ask  God  to  do  it."  Sup- 
pose an  engineer  should  not  take  pains  to 
build  his  bridge  properly,  trusting  the  train 
would  pass  over  it  in  safety,  because  the 
friends  of  some  of  the  passengers  were  pray- 
ing. Suppo^  we  should  not  send  proper 
officers  to  command  our  ships,  or  drill  properly 
the  men  who  have  charge  of  them  at  sea, 
and  trust  to  prayer  to  avert  the  inevitable 
catastrophe  that  would  result.  Do  you  not 
see  how  this  idea  of  prayer  is  shallow,  and 
does  not  reach  the  heart  of  the  difficulty  ? 

When  we  come  up  into  the  higher  ranges 
of  thought  and  life,  to  our  spiritual  relation- 
ship to  God,  do  we  change  Him  there  any 
more  than  we  affect  that  result  in  what  we 
call  the  material  ranges  of  the  universe  ?  Is 
God  changeable  up  here,  who  is  the  change- 
less One  in  the  lower  realms  of  life  ?  I  do 
not  believe  it.  When  I  pray  to  God,  I  do  not 
expect  to  change  Him.  If  I  thought  I  could 
change  Him,  I  would  never  dare  to  open  my 
lips  in  petition.  It  is  because  I  know  I  cannot 
change  Him  that  I  pray,  and  pray  with  my  whole 
heart  and  soul, — pray  trustingly,  lovingly,  con- 
fidently, that  grand  things  may  result ;  and  why? 


2IO  Prayer 

Let  me  use  another  illustration,  possibly 
throwing  some  light  upon  this  matter.  I  have 
a  plant  that  does  not  grow.  The  leaves  are 
fading  and  dropping  off.  Something  is  the 
matter  with  it.  What  shall  I  do  ?  It  occurs 
to  me  that,  perhaps,  if  I  take  it  outdoors,  give 
it  better  air,  let  it  be  where  the  winds  can  blow 
upon  it,  where  the  rains  will  refresh  it,  where 
the  sun  will  shine  upon  it,  it  will  take  a  new 
lease  of  life.  I  do  that  ;  and  the  result  is 
that,  as  a  consequence  of  my  effort,  the  plant 
does  live  and  grow. 

Have  I  changed — what  ?  Have  I  changed 
the  sun  any,  the  rain  or  the  dew?  No.  I 
have  simply  changed  the  relation  between  my 
plant  and  these  forces  that  have  in  them  the 
power  of  life.  I  have  accomplished  my  pur- 
pose, however,  just  the  same. 

So  I  believe  that,  when  I  pray  to  God, 
when  I  come  into  this  spiritual  sympathy  with 
Him,  this  personal  attitude  towards  Him,  I 
change  the  .relation  between  my  soul  and  God. 
I  do  not  change  Him  ;  but  I  get  a  result  in 
answer  to  my  prayer  that  is  just  as  effective  as 
though  I  changed  Him, — more  effective.  I 
change  my  relation  to  God,  and  the  drooping 
life  in  me  revives ;  and  I  have  new  power,  new 
joy,  a  new  sense  of  peace  in  His  presence. 


Prayer 


2  1  1 


So  it  seems  to  mc  that  from  the  lowest 
order  of  nature  clear  up  to  the  very  presence- 
chamber  of  the  invisible  One  the  same  law- 
holds.  God  does  not  change  ;  but  my  prayer 
— prayer  of  one  kind  on  one  level  of  life,  of 
another  kind  on  another  level — complies  with 
the  inevitable  and  eternal  conditions  of  life 
and  peace.  And  so  I  gain  the  answer  to  my 
lifelong  desire. 

Even  the  prayers  that  have  been  most  com- 
mon in  the  past,  defective  as  they  have  been^ 
have  not  been  all  astray.  That  which  I  have 
been  dealing  with,  as  you  will  recognise,  has 
mostly  been  one  element  only  of  prayer  : 
begging,  asking  for  things.  But  the  better 
part  of  prayer  is  not  begging ;  it  is  thanksgiv- 
ing, it  is  aspiration,  it  is  trust,  it  is  communion. 
I  come  into  the  presence  of  a  friend.  I  sit 
and  talk ;  we  exchange  ideas ;  this  is  sympathy, 
the  touch  of  the  hand,  and  both  of  us  are 
refreshed  and  lifted  up ;  but  we  have  not 
either  of  us  begged  anything  from  the  other, 
and  we  have  not  either  of  us  expected  the 
other  to  change  or  to  become  something  dif- 
ferent from  what  he  was  before. 

Here,  then,  in  trust  and  communion,  in 
gratitude,  are  the  great  secret  places  of  prayer. 
And  these  remain,  as  they  always  have  been, 


2 1 2  Prayer 

sources  of  strength  and  consolation  beyond  the 
power  of  words  to  express.  A  child  wakes  up 
in  the  night,  looks  up,  perhaps,  from  some  bad 
dream,  and  finds  mother  bending  over  the 
cradle.  He  does  not  ask  for  anything ;  he 
does  not  need  anything  except  the  conscious- 
ness that  she  is  there. 

How  many  times,  when  a  person  has  been 
going  through  some  dangerous  surgical  opera- 
tion, has  he  found  power  simply  by  clasping 
the  hand  of  a  friend  !  The  pain  was  not 
abated,  the  danger  of  the  operation  remained 
just  what  it  was  before;  but  there  came  an 
increment  of  strength,  a  feeling  of  peace,  be- 
cause of  the  presence  of  love  and  sympathy. 

It  is  the  sense  of  the  presence  of  some  one 
you  love  which  you  care  for.  So  I  believe 
that  right  in  here  is  the  grandest,  noblest  part 
of  prayer,  that  no  scientific  difficulties  can  ever 
touch.  God  is  my  Father.  I  do  not  want 
Him  to  change.  I  would  not,  if  I  might,  ask 
Him  to  take  a  stumbling-block  out  of  my  road. 
Perhaps  the  stumbling-block  ought  to  be  there. 
Suffering,  as  I  have,  so  keenly,  so  intensely,  so. 
constantly,  for  two  years  past,  I  am  not  sure 
that  I  would  ^  dare  to  ask  this  burden  to  be 
removed  if  I  might.  I  should  hesitate.  Per- 
haps it  is  better  that  it  should  not. 


Prayer 


21 


Sufferino-  of  all  sorts  faces  us  in  this  world, 
— loss,  death,  trouble  ;  but  if  we  can  believe 
that  this  is  God's  house,  and  we  are  His  child- 
ren living  in  it,  and  that  we  are  here  for  a 
purpose,  that  we  can  touch  His  hand  or  feel 
that  we  clasp  the  edge  of  His  robe,  even  in  the 
dark,  and  know  somehow  that  it  is  all  rioht, 
there  is  the  power  and  the  potency  of  the 
noblest  thing  we  can  conceive  of  in  prayer.  If 
we  can  only  hear  that  song  of  Browning's  in 
"  Pippa  Passes," — 

"  God  's  in  His  heaven, 
All's  well  with  the  world," — 

do  we  need  to  pray  for  anything  else  ? 

To  my  mind  there  is  something  superb  in 
the  authentic  teaching  of  Jesus  on  this  subject. 
He  discourages  public  prayer.  He  tells  us  to 
go  into  our  closet  and  talk  with  the  Father  ; 
and,  if  we  follow  His  example,  He  did  not  ask 
for  things  much.  He  shrunk,  as  we  all  shrink, 
from  pain.  He  said:  "  Father,  if  it  be  possible, 
let  this  cup  pass.  Nevertheless,  not  as  I  will, 
but  as  Thou  wilt."  He  did  not  ask  for  a  great 
many  things.  His  prayer  was  gratitude  and 
trust.  So  it  seems  to  me  that  as  we  get  older^ 
as  we  think  more  deeply,  as  we  get  closer  to 
God.  we  leave  behind  us  that  old  attitude  of 


214  Prayer 

begging  for  selfish  advantages.  We  find  that 
the  grandest  and  sweetest  things  for  ourselves 
do  not  come  along  those  channels.  Science, 
in  its  latest  word,  is  in  that  utterance  of 
Tennyson,  where  he  says  : 

"Speak  to  Him,  thou,  for  He  hears;  and  Spirit  with 
spirit  can  meet. 
Closer  is  He  than  breathing,  and  nearer  than  hands 
and  feet." 

We  can  speak  to  Him  ;  and  so  I  trust  my- 
self to  speak  to  Him  without  caring  whether 
my  words  are  always  overwise  and  carefully 
selected  or  not.  When  my  little  boy,  playing 
on  the  floor  at  my  feet,  at  last  tired  out,  climbs 
up  on  my  knees  and  prattles  and  talks  to  me, 
and  tells  me  what  he  wishes,  do  I  care  whether 
he  is  wise  or  not  or  whether  he  asks  me  for 
things  that  a  philosopher  would  ask  for  ?  I  do 
not  want  him  to  be  a  philosopher.  I  want 
him  to  be  ray  boy. 

And  so,  if  God  be  our  Father,  I  think  He 
would  get  tired  of  us  if  we  were  always  posing 
as  philosophers  in  His  presence.  Let  us  pour, 
out  our  hearts,  and  love  Him  and  believe  He 
loves  us,  and  Jearn  to  trust  Him,  so  that  we 
may  be  patient  if  the  burden  does  crush  us. 
Only  let  us  get  hold  of  His  hand  ;  then  we 


Prayer  215 

will  bear  the  pain;  we  will  walk,  if  it  is  ever  so 
dark.  We  will  not  trouble.  We  will  wait 
until  the  light  breaks.  Only  let  us  i^et  hold 
of  His  hand  and  feel  His  touch,  which  is  life 
and  peace. 


> 


X 

THE  CHURCH 

THERE  is  a  certain  section  of  the  Episcopal 
Church  in  this  country  that  is  accustomed 
to  make  the  claim  that  that  Church  is  the  only 
religious  organisation  in  America  that  has  a 
ripfht  to  that  name.  This  claim  to  be  the 
Church  is  a  very  common  one  on  the  part  of 
the  Anglican  Church  in  England  ;  and  it  seems 
a  more  simple  and  natural  claim  there,  for  the 
reason  that  it  is  the  one  religious  organisation 
recognised  by  the  Government,  and  established 
and  supported  by  public  taxation.  But  if  we 
trace  the  matter  a  little  further  down  the  years, 
towards  the  far-off  beginning,  we  find  that  there 
is  another  .branch  of  the  Christian  Church 
which  looks  upon  the  Episcopal  Church  in  this 
country,  and  even  the  Anglican  Church  across 
the  sea,  as  being  an  upstart,  a  parvenu,  heret- 
ical both  in  its  order  and  its  doctrine,  as  hav- 
ing no  claim  to  speak  for  God  with  authority. 
The  Roman  Church,  of  course,  as  you  are 
216 


The  Church  217 

aware,  is  the  one  I  refer  to,  which  holds  to  this 
position  in  regard  to  the  AngHcan  Church  and 
its  claim.  Looking  further  still,  we  find  that 
the  Greek  Church  looks  down  with  a  pitying 
sort  of  contempt  upon  even  the  Roman  Church 
and  its  pretences  and  claims.  Not  a  great 
while  ago  the  pope  issued  an  invitation  to  the 
other  Churcftes  in  Christendom  to  help  in 
the  matter  of  uniting  all  religious  bodies  in  one, 
— meaning,  by  that  invitation,  of  course,  that 
all  other  religious  bodies  should  come  to  Rome. 
This  the  Greek  Church  treated  with  contempt, 
and  made  the  claim  that  it  antedated,  not  only 
in  time,  but  in  authority,  the  pretensions  of 
the  power  that  is  located  on  the  banks  of  the 
Tiber.  The  impartial  historical  student,  who 
has  no  brief  to  make  out,  no  theory  to  sup- 
port, who  is  simply  trying  to  find  the  truth, 
looks  into  and  dismisses,  either  gladly  or 
sorrowfully,  as  the  case  may  be,  these  preten- 
sions on  the  part  of  all  three. 

One  claim,  for  example,  is  that  the  priest- 
hood has  some  peculiar  efficacy  and  power  on 
account  of  what  is  called  the  Apostolic  Suc- 
cession. That  is,  each  priest  in  his  ordination 
has  had  the  hands  of  some  older  priest — some 
one  ordained  before  him  —  placed  upon  his 
head ;  and  this   one  has  felt    the   touch   of  a 


2i8  The  Church 

preceding  priest,  and  so  on,  they  claim,  clear 
back  to  the  Apostles.  And  this  is  supposed  to 
confer  upon  the  priests  of  to-day  a  divinely 
appointed  authority  and  power  to  administer 
the  sacraments,  to  conduct  the  worship,  to 
stand  as  the  representatives  of  the  divine 
power  here  on  earth. 

Now,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  two  things  must 
be  said  about  this  claim.  In  the  first  place 
there  is  not  one  single  particle  of  proof  on  the 
face  of  the  earth  that  is  worth  any  honest  and 
earnest  man's  attention  that  any  such  thing 
has  ever  happened,  that  there  is  any  such  thing 
as  Apostolic  Succession,  to  start  with.  And 
in  the  second  place  there  is  no  proof  that,  if 
there  were,  it  would  carry  any  validity  or 
spiritual  power  or  divine  authority  with  it. 
For  there  is  certainly  no  record  of  the  divine 
appointment  of  any  such  order. 

There  is  another  claim, — I  think  you  will 
find  this  made  by  each  one  of  these  three  great 
branches  of-  the  Church  equally,  —  that  the 
Church  has  been  made  by  divine  appointment 
the  depository  of  the  divine  truth,  so  much  of. 
the  divine  revelation  as  it  is  necessary  for  man 
to  know  in  order  to  be  saved.  The  Church 
has  this  special,  specific,  divine  deposit  of  truth 
in   its  keeping, — that  is  the  claim.     Again  it 


The  Church  219 

must  be  said  by  the  cahii  and  careful,  unbiassed 
historical  student  that  there  is  absolutely  no 
basis  for  any  such  claim. 

Note,  for  example,  the  deposit  which  the 
Anglican  Church  holds  is  different  from  that 
which  the  Roman  Church  holds.  The  deposit 
which  the  Greek  Church  holds  is  different  from 
both  the  others.  Which  of  them  is  the  ori- 
ginal divine  deposit  ?  Nobody  can  tell ;  there 
is  no  record  of  any  such  deposit  ever  having 
been  made  at  all.  And,  then,  we  know — that 
is  too  large  a  subject  for  me  to  go  into  at  pre- 
sent—  that  there  have  been  definite,  distinct, 
important  changes  made  in  the  beliefs  which 
have  been  held  by  all  three  of  these  branches 
of  the  great  Universal  Church  ;  and  we  know, 
beyond  all  question,  that  each  one  of  them  has 
made  the  most  serious  and  lamentable  mis- 
takes as  to  matters  of  fact  and  truth.  So 
there  is  no  basis  for  this  claim  that  either  one 
of  them  has  God's  everlasting  truth  in  its  keep- 
ing ;  and  yet  it  is  assumed  by  the  supposed 
authoritative  utterances  of  all  three  of  them, 
and  assumed  continually. 

There  is  another  tremendous  claim  that  is 
made,  this  specially  by  the  Roman  Church, 
that  it  has  the  power  of  the  keys, — the  power 
to  open  and  shut  heaven,  the  power  to  admit 


2  20  The  Church 

or  exclude  whomsoever  it  will  ;  that  it  stands 
as  the  divinely  appointed  successor  and  repre- 
sentative of  Christ  here  on  earth.  Again,  as 
in  regard  to  these  other  claims,  truth  compels 
the  careful  and  unbiassed  historic  student  to 
say  that  there  is  absolutely  not  the  slightest 
basis  for  any  such  claim.  Even  Christ  himself 
never  made  such  a  claim  even  on  his  own 
behalf. 

They  tell  us,  for  example,  that  Peter  was 
selected  among  the  twelve  apostles  to  be  the 
successor  of  Christ,  and  that  he  went  to  Rome 
and  became  the  first  bishop  there — the  first 
in  the  long  line  of  popes  which  has  reached 
from  that  day  to  this.  I  challenge  scholarly 
denial  of  the  statement  which  I  am  about  to 
make.  Anybody  can  make  prejudiced  and 
bigoted  denial  of  anything.  The  best  scholars 
in  the  world  suppose,  what  seems  to  me  be- 
yond reasonable  question,  that  this  whole  pas- 
sage in  the  New  Testament  about  the  keys 
and  Peter  was  an  after-thought  and  an  inter- 
polation after  the  claim  on  the  part  of  the 
Roman  power  had  been  put  forth.  Be  that  as 
it  may,  the  one  point  I  wish  to  emphasise  is 
this  :  there  is^no  historical  reason  in  the  wide 
world  for  supposing  that  Peter  ever  went  to 
Rome  at  all,  much  less  that  he  was  bishop  of 


The  Church  221 

the  Church  there  and  the  first  in  the  hne  of 
popes. 

After  the  book  of  the  Acts  of  the  Apostles 
closes,  there  is  absolutely  no  historical  trace 
whatever  of  the  apostle.  The  hundreds  of 
legends  that  have  grown  up  and  flourished  in 
the  Church  are  of  no  more  historical  authority 
than  the  stor)^of  William  Tell  or  of  Hercules. 
So  much  for  these  stupendous  claims  put  forth 
on  the  part  of  the  different  great  branches  of 
the  Church, 

When  we  come  to  Protestantism,  to  the 
ordinary  run  of  our  churches  here  in  this  coun- 
try, what  of  them  ?  Each  one  here  has  some 
peculiar  and  extraordinary  claim  to  make  on 
its  behalf.  I  was  born  and  trained  in  the 
Congregational  Church.  I  have  been  familiar 
from  my  childhood  with  the  supposed  fact 
that  Congregationalism  was  certainly  the  order 
of  the  New  Testament — the  democratic,  popu- 
lar method  of  orfjanisino-  churches.  That  has 
been  the  special  claim  of  the  Congrega- 
tionalists. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  Presbyterians  tell  us 
that,  because  "  presbyters"  are  mentioned  in  the 
New  Testament,  the  Church  should  be  ruled 
in  accordance  with  their  polity.  Then  the 
word  ''  cpiscopos^'  meaning  "bishop" — that  is 


222  The  Church 

overseer — also  occurring  in  the  New  Testa- 
ment, the  EpiscopaHans  claim  that  the  Church 
should  be  organised  and  governed  after  their 
fashion.  Then  some  churches  are  based  on 
the  peculiar  method  of  what  is  claimed  to  be 
a  sacrament,  like  baptism.  Most  of  the 
churches,  at  any  rate,  claim  that  they  have 
some  advantage  over  all  others  in  either  quality 
or  order  or  method  of  one  kind  or  another ; 
and  each  of  them  claims  that  it  has  the  divine 
truth  as  to  the  terms  of  salvation  for  men. 

Now,  when  we  go  back  and  carefully  study 
the  authentic  records  of  the  life  and  the  teach- 
ing, the  sayings,  of  Jesus  in  the  New  Testament, 
what  do  we  find  ?  We  find  that  Jesus  never 
organised  or  established  any  church  at  all  ;  and 
there  is  not  a  single  authentic  word  of  his  ever 
uttered  concerning  the  foundino-  or  the  oro^an- 
ising  or  arranging  of  any  church  whatever. 

In  the  second  place,  Jesus  never  set  up  any 
standards  of  doctrine  for  the  guidance  or  gov- 
ernment of.  his  disciples,  whether  organised  or 
unorganised ;  and  he  never  made  any  particu- 
lar intellectual  beliefs  the  condition  of  entering 
any  society,  even  the  divine  kingdom  of 
heaven. 

In  the  third  place,  Jesus  never  established 
any  sacrament,  whether  two,  as  the  Protest- 


The  Church  223 

ants  claim,  or  seven,  as  the  Romanists  insist. 
He  never  said  a  word  about  any  sacrament 
whatever.  And  then,  in  the  fourth  place,  it 
was  the  farthest  possible,  not  only  from  fact, 
but  from  the  spirit  and  letter  and  temper  of 
all  his  teaching,  that  he  should  have  appointed 
an  authoritative  successor  to  lord  it  over  his 
disciples.  Do^s  he  not  say,  and  insist  on  it 
with  all  the  power  of  his  burning  words  :  "  It  is 
the  way  of  the  peoples,  the  nations,  the  Gen- 
tiles, that  their  great  ones  exercise  lordship, 
have  authority  over  the  people ;  but  it  shall 
not  be  so  among  you  ?  "  And  yet  it  has  been 
more  so  among  those  who  have  claimed  defin- 
itely and  emphatically  to  be  his  followers  than 
it  has  been  concerning  any  other  despotism 
that  has  been  established  since  the  earth  was 
made.  "  It  shall  not  be  so  among  you." 
Whoever  shall  be  great  among  you,  let  him  be 
your  servant,  your  minister.  He  who  is  great- 
est is  the  servant  of  all. 

If  Jesus  were  present  to-day  he  would  wither, 
with  the  burning  words  he  would  utter,  with 
the  lightning  flash  of  his  speech,  all  the  preten- 
tious "  princes  of  the  church."  I  marvel,  as  I 
look  at  his  words,  how  ever  a  petty  priest  on 
earth  dares  to  arrogate  to  himself  the  title  of 
"  Father,"  "  Father  So  and  So,"  and  the  Pope, 


2  24  The  Church 

the  great  father  of  them  all,  since  Jesus  says  : 
"  Let  no  one  among  you  be  called  Rabbi,  let  no 
man  be  called  Father  :  one  is  your  Master,  one 
is  your  Father,  even  in  heaven  ;  and  all  ye  are 
brethren."  That  is  the  teaching,  and  the  most 
emphatic  teaching,  of  Jesus  concerning  this 
matter  of  power  and  authority  among  His 
disciples. 

How  did  all  this  come  about  ?  In  the  most 
natural  way,  when  we  consider  what  kind  of 
people  men  and  women  are,  the  historic  back- 
ground of  things,  the  experiences  of  the  past, 
— particularly  when  we  remember  how  easily 
they  forgot  and  disregarded  the  first  com- 
mands of  the  Master  in  so  many  different 
directions.  Rome  was  the  seat  of  the  Empire. 
When  there  came  to  be  a  church  in  Rome,  a 
church  in  Antioch,  churches  in  Galatia,  all 
over  the  world,  the  church  in  Rome  would  nat- 
urally be  looked  upon  as  the  great  central 
church,  because  it  was  the  church  of  the  me- 
tropolis ;  and  the  man  at  the  head  of  that 
church  would  naturally  exert  more  power  and 
influence  than  the  one  who  was  at  the  head  of 
some  small  provincial  church.  We  do  the  same 
thing  in  the  nineteenth  century  as  in  the  first. 
The  minister  of  a  great  popular  church  in  New 
York,  if  you  come  to  a  convention  of  ministers 


The  Church  225 

to  discuss  any  matter  of  order  or  doctrine,  is 
sure  to  have  more  influence,  o'ther  thinofs  beine 
equal,  than  the  minister  of  a  small  church  in 
the  country,  who  is  more  likely  to  keep  in  the 
background.  So  the  bishop  of  Rome  came  to 
claim  and  exercise  an  immense  power,  simply 
because  of  his  position. 

By  and  by  fne  seat  of  the  empire  moved  to 
Constantinople,  and  the  bishop  of  Constanti- 
nople began  to  think  that  he  should  have  the 
greatest  power  in  the  empire.  So  East  and 
West  were  pitted  against  each  other ;  and  out 
of  that  rivalry  and  struggle,  as  real  as  any 
political  fight  that  has  been  known  since  the 
world  began,  coupled  with  certain  differences 
of  doctrine  which  are  so  slight  that  it  is  almost 
impossible  for  a  Western  mind  to  comprehend 
what  they  were  about,  came  the  split,  and  we 
have  the  Greek  Church  and  the  Roman 
Church,  chiefly  on  account  of  the  rivalries  and 
struggles  and  strife  of  the  bishops.  Rome 
controlled  and  prevailed  at  last,  so  far  as  the 
principal  part  of  the  West  was  concerned,  and 
became  one  of  the  most  tremendous  and  most 
pitiless  despotisms  that  the  world  has  ever 
seen. 

By  and  by  comes  the  Protestant  rebellion, — 
revolution    in    the    interests    of   liberty ;    and 


226  The  Church 

Luther  goes  to  the  Bible  and  resurrects  it, 
and  brings  it  into  the  hfe  of  the  common  peo- 
ple, and  makes  that  his  final  court  of  appeal, — - 
not  because  the  Bible  had  ever  made  any  claim 
to  be  such  a  court,  but  as  an  expedient  against 
the  Pope,  against  Rome.  So  we  have  our 
hundreds  of  Protestant  churches,  each  one 
claiming  that  it  is  based  on  the  Bible,  and  only 
illustrating  the  fact  that  the  Bible  is  capable  of 
being  interpreted  in  a  hundred  different  ways ; 
and  all  these  ways  may  be  the  result  of  honest 
intention,  though  not  of  very  clear-headed 
judgment. 

So  here  we  come  to  find  ourselves  where  we 
are,  in  the  modern  world,  with  these  three  great 
churches  putting  forth  their  claims,  contra- 
dicting each  other,  and  a  hundred  smaller 
churches  that  have  sprung  up  and  divided 
Protestantism  among  themselves.  What  is  to 
be  the  outcome  ?  Is  the  Church  to  pass  away  ? 
Is  it  to  have  no  more  authority,  no  more  power 
to  play  its  great  part  in  the  life  of  the  people  ? 

There  are  those  who  tell  us  that  science  is 
to  supersede  it ;  literature  is  taking  its  place.. 
People  stay  away  from  church  and  read  instead 
of  going  to  service,  and  say  they  get  quite  as 
much  spiritual  benefit  as  they  could  by  going 
through  what  they  call  a  "  lifeless  service  "  and 


The  Church  227 

listening  to  a  sermon  not  over- inspiring. 
They  go  out  into  the  woods,  and  say  they 
worship  God  through  the  glories  and  beauties 
of  the  natural  world. 

So  there  are  springing  up  these  claims  for 
religious  life  and  power  over  the  lives  of  men. 
What  is  to  become  of  the  Church  ?  Let  us 
glance  back  a  moment  and  study  a  few  first 
principles  and  their  world-wide  human  applica- 
tion. Religion — this  we  may  plant  ourselves 
upon  as  a  changeless  foundation — is  the  great 
central,  universal,  most  important  element  in 
the  life  of  the  world.  It  has  proved  itself  so 
in  every  century  that  can  be  historically  studied. 
And  from  the  beofinninc:  we  have  had  religion 
organised  in  some  sort  of  fashion.  There  has, 
at  any  rate,  been  a  state  religion,  a  tribal  re- 
ligion, a  communal  religion  on  the  part  of  the 
people,  some  religion  in  which  they  united 
because  they  belonged  to  the  same  tribe  or 
were  of  the  same  kinship,  or  related  as  citizens 
of  the  same  city  or  country, — always  has  there 
been  some  oreat  national  reliorion  in  this  sense. 
And  besides  this  there  has  been  a  family  re- 
ligion. Among  the  Romans,  for  example,  we 
have  the  religion  of  the  Lares  and  Penates, 
the  gods  of  the  hearthstone  and  the  gods  of 
the  larder, — the  hearth  and  the  food.     These 


228  The  Church 

were  not  missionary  religions,  but  those  which 
belonged  to  the  family.  The  family,  the  city, 
or  the  state  took  part  in  these  worships  ;  but 
such  have  always  existed  ;  there  has  always 
been  as  much  oro-anisation  as  this. 

Now,  turning  to  the  Hebrew  people,  we  find 
the  same  ideas  illustrated  here.  There  was 
the  national  temple  worship.  As  the  law  came 
to  be  written  and  the  people  came  to  regard  it 
more  and  more  highly,  there  sprang  up  the 
synagogue  as  an  institution.  Wherever  there 
were  ten  or  a  dozen  people,  a  synagogue 
might  be  organised  ;  and  in  every  little  place, 
all  over  Palestine,  it  was  found  ;  and  in  larger 
places  sometimes  hundreds  of  them,  as  you 
will  find  a  number  of  churches  in  a  great  mod- 
ern city.  This  synagogue  worship  was  for  the 
study  of  the  law,  offering  of  prayers,  teaching 
the  people  what  was  believed  to  be  the  re- 
ligious and  personal  duties  towards  the  divine 
Father  of  all.  The  synagogue,  in  the  provi- 
dential ordering  of  things,  undoubtedly  be- 
came the  progenitor  of  the  Church.  If  there 
had  been  no  synagogue,  there  probably  would 
not  have  been  the  Church  ;  one  succeeded  the 
other. 

So,  when  we  study  the  life  of  Jesus,  we  find 
facts  like  these.      I   said  Jesus   organised   no 


The  Church  229 

church,  said  nothino-  about  the  iuiportance 
of  doctrine,  established  no  sacraments.  Why 
should  he?  It  is  almost  impossible  for  us  to 
put  ourselves  back  in  the  atmosphere  of  that 
century.  If  Jesus  be  correctly  reported,  he 
himself  expressly  told  those  with  whom  he 
spoke  that  the  world  was  to  come  to  an  end 
before  the  generation  to  which  he  was  speak- 
ing had  passed  away,  that  he  was  to  reappear 
in  the  clouds  of  heaven  to  establish  miracu- 
lously the  coming  of  the  imminent  kingdom  of 
God.  All  the  disciples  believed  this  and  taught 
it.  The  New  Testament  is  saturated  with  the 
theme,  on  tiptoe  with  expectation.  Paul  writes 
about  it ;  it  is  referred  to  in  the  speeches  of 
the  Acts  of  the  Apostles  ;  the  Book  of  Revela- 
tion is  full  of  it ;  it  is  everywhere  in  the  New 
Testament.  People  believed  that  Jesus  was 
coming  immediately.  If  coming  immediately, 
why  establish  a  church  to  set  forth  doctrines 
or  beliefs  ?  Why  appoint  anybody  lord  and 
governor  over  a  church  which  did  not  need  to 
be  organised  ? 

But  years  went  by  ;  and  the  expected  change 
did  not  conic.  Then  what  ?  Naturally,  those 
who  believed  crathered  themselves  toorether  in 
little  groups.  Naturally,  some  one  was  ap- 
pointed to  manage  the  meetings,  which  must 


230  The  Church 

follow  some  particular  order.  Some  one  became 
chairman  of  the  meeting.  The  elders,  the 
presbyters,  were  elected  to  act,  as  having  the 
most  experience.  So  the  episcopos,  which  sim- 
ply means  overseer,  and  all  the  organisations 
we  know  of,  came  into  being. 

The  churches  grew,  the  more  prominent 
churches  claimed  and  got  more  power,  their 
leaders  came  to  be  leaders  in  the  religious  life 
of  the  time  ;  and  so,  springing  out  of  these 
common,  ordinary,  universal  phases  of  human 
life  there  unfolded — through  the  last  eighteen 
hundred  years — the  evolution  of  the  life  of  the 
Church  such  as  we  know  it — springing  out  of 
these  same  qualities  of  human  nature  with 
which  we  are  familiar  in  other  departments  of 
life.     So  came  the  Church. 

Is  it  to  abide  ?  I  have  said  that  religion  is 
integral,  central,  universal,  eternal.  The  most 
important  fact  about  a  man  is  that  he  is  a 
religious  being,  vitally  related  to  God,  to  the 
unseen  Power,  and  bound  by  this  fact  as  a 
child  of  God  to  all  the  other  children  of  God, 
his  brethren  and  his  sisters.  This  is  the  most 
vital  fact  about  him  ;  this  is  the  most  central, 
most  human  fact  in  all  our  human  life. 

Now,  then,  it  seems  to  me  that  the  Church's 
unassailable,   indisputable    claim  for   life    and 


The  Church  '         231 

power,  and  for  the  loyalty,  the  hearty,  loving, 
continuous  allegiance  of  the  people  who  appre- 
ciate and  understand,  is  in  the  fact  that  man  is 
a  religious  being,  and  that  the  most  important 
thing  about  him  is  the  fact  that  he  is  a  spiritual 
child  of  God,  and  that  the  Church  is  the  only 
organisation  on  the  face  of  the  earth  that 
makes  this  fts  one  end  and  aim, — to  cultivate 
and  develop  man  as  a  spiritual  being,  as  a  child 
of  God  ;  to  unfold  his  religious  nature,  to  help 
develop  his  religioUs  life. 

Man,  then,  if  he  be  a  child  of  God,  if  he  be  a 
religious  being,  needs,  more  than  he  needs 
anything  else,  to  have  his  religious  nature  cul- 
tivated and  developed.  And  how  is  that  done  ? 
In  the  first  place  there  must  be  time,  some 
special  time  given  to  it.  If  a  man  is  going  to 
be  an  artist,  and  there  is  no  particular  time 
that  he  devotes  to  learning  his  art,  do  you 
have  much  hope  of  him  ?  Will  he  trust  that 
it  will  come  in  some  indefinite,  indefinable  way, 
whether  he  sets  apart  any  particular  time  to 
devote  to  it  or  not  ?  Suppose  he  is  a  lover  of 
beauty  :  is  it  enough  that  he  goes  out  and 
walks  through  the  woods,  and  lets  the  beauty 
of  the  world  play  about  him  ?  Suppose  he  is 
a  lover  of  music  :  is  it  enough  that  he  listens 
to  bird-songs  and  the  waves  on  the  seashore 


232  The  Church 

and  the  tinkling  of  the  brooks  as  they  run  down 
the  hills  to  the  sea  ? 

Is  this  enough  ?  You  know  perfectly  well 
that  if  a  man  is  to  become  an  artist,  it  can  be 
only  by  strenuous,  patient  work,  day  after  day, 
week  after  week,  year  after  year,  endeavor, 
devotion.  Even  if  a  man  be  crowned  with 
genius,  it  cannot  take  the  place  of  hard  work, 
althoucrh  sometimes  it  has  been  said  that  hard 
work  may  take  the  place  of  genius.  But,  cert- 
ainly, without  either  one  or  the  other  of  them 
a  musician  or  an  artist  is  not  likely  to  make 
much  progress. 

Do  you  think,  then,  that  men  are  going  to 
cultivate  their  religious  natures  by  going  out, 
as  they  say,  under  the  stars,  to  be  lifted  by  the 
general  influences  of  nature  ;  by  going  into 
the  woods,  because  Bryant  has  said  they  were 
God's  first  temples ;  by  playing  golf  in  the 
midst  of  some  beautiful  scenery  ?  I  have  no 
objection  to  playing  golf,  and  playing  it  on 
certain  parts,  of  Sunday.  I  am  not  talking 
now  about  keeping  Sunday.  It  is  simply  this  : 
that  the  religious  nature  of  man,  if  it  is  to  be  . 
cultivated,  must  have  some  time,  some  specific, 
definite  time  devoted  to  it,  and  some  specific, 
definite,  patient,  earnest  effort. 

Is  it  not  worth  while  to  have  some  particular 


The  Church  233 

place?  We  say,  "  God  is  everywhere  :  He  is 
anywhere."  Of  course  He  is.  Why  do  you 
not  say,  I  can  love  and  remember  my  mother 
anywhere,  or  my  dead  wife,  or  my  dead  child  ? 
Why  is  it  that  you  find  yourself  a  thousand 
times  more  thrilled,  touched,  moved,  in  certain 
definite  places  associated  with  them,  in  a  room 
where  they  used  to  live,  in  the  presence  of  ob- 
jects which  they  used  to  treasure  ?  Why  does 
a  knife,  or  some  little  trinket  that  belonged  to 
a  dead  friend,  touch  you  and  thrill  you  ?  Why 
not  some  other  thing  just  as  well  ? 

Is  it  not  a  law  of  human  nature  that  certain 
places,  consecrated,  associated  with  certain 
definite  ideas  and  purposes  and  aims  are  helps, 
that  they  cannot  be  dispensed  with?  May  not 
the  same  thinijf  be  true  of  relioion  ? 

Then,  some  method,  some  order.  If  the 
artist  or  the  student  in  any  direction  is  to 
attain  proficiency  in  the  work  which  he  has 
undertaken,  he  must  have  some  order,  some 
method,  some  way  to  go  about  it.  Is  it  not 
just  as  natural  and  simple  that  we  should  have 
some  order,  some  method,  some  way  in  our 
worship,  in  the  attempt  to  cultivate  ourselves 
as  spiritual  beings,  in  the  attempt  to  lift  our- 
selves into  the  light  of  the  higher  life  ? 

It  seems  to  me,  then,  that  the  Church,   as 


234  The  Church 

an  organisation, — having  its  place,  its  time, 
its  methods  or  ways,  —  simply  follows  the 
precedent  which  has  been  established  as  good 
in  every  other  department  of  human  life.  As- 
sociation, for  example.  Can  you  not  be  just  as 
good  alone  ?  What  is  the  use  of  going  to 
church  ?  What  is  the  use  of  joining  a  church, 
an  alliance,  a  Sunday-school  ?  What  is  the  use 
of  joining  anything  ?  Can  you  not  be  just  as 
powerful,  just  as  consecrated,  alone  ?  No,  you 
cannot,  and  you  know  you  cannot,  in  every 
other  department  of  human  life  except  religion. 
Why  should  you  there  ?  Let  a  man  have  an 
audience  of  ten  thousand  people,  and  each 
person  shut  in  a  cell  by  himself  with  an  open 
place  in  front  through  which  he  can  see  the 
speaker,  —  cut  off  from  his  fellows,  not  able  to 
exchange  a  touch  or  feel  the  thrill  of  any  hu- 
man companionship.  Can  you  enthuse  and 
fire  and  lift  up  that  audience  ?  You  might  as 
well  talk  to  one  man  alone,  and  he  sitting  on 
an  iceberg. . 

It  is  this  touch  of  the  common  life,  this  idea 
that  it  is  one  people,  thrilled  through  by  feel- 
ings and  emotions,  that  makes  us  able  when 
we  are  together  to  be  stirred,  moved,  lifted, 
more  than  when  we  are  alone.  Generals,  mil- 
itary  officers,    have    discovered    this   true   in 


The  Church 


•j.i 


regard  to  an  army.  Organise  an  army.  Let 
soldiers  keep  step  with  each  other,  be  thrilled 
by  common  music,  see  those  ahead  marching. 
You  can  move  a  column  as  you  could  not  pos- 
sibly move  an  individual. 

Organisation  in  business.  They  are  doing  a 
great  deal  of  work  at  the  present  time  in  re- 
gard to  criticising  trusts.  The  criticisms  will 
wear  out  quicker  than  the  trusts  will,  in  my 
judgment  ;  for  it  seems  to  me  that  they  are 
nothing  but  a  perfectly  natural  and  inevitable 
example  of  those  principles  of  organisation 
which  are  orreater  and  more  far-reachincr  as  we 
grow  more  civilised.  Organisation,  then,  is  the 
mightiest  power  on  the  face  of  the  earth  ;  and 
a  man  becomes  not  simply  one  more.  Each 
individual  is  multiplied  by  ten  when  they  are 
all  organised  and  touched  and  thrilled  by  a 
common  life.  Even  a  cipher  becomes  mighty 
when  rightly  related  to  other  figures. 

Then  there  is  another  consideration  which 
seems  to  me  immensely  important  in  favor  of 
the  Church.  We  are  engaged  here  at  the 
present  time  in  a  specific,  definite  effort  at  a 
particular  kind  of  reform.  These  waves  of 
reform  pass  over  us  every  little  while  ;  some- 
times they  attack  one  particular  evil,  some- 
times another.      Do  they  do  permanent  good  ? 


236  The  Church 

I  do  not  think  that  the  methods  that  are  used 
do  a  great  deal  of  good.  They  help  educate 
the  people,  they  help  lift  up  the  level  of  the 
moral  consciousness  of  the  time.  In  that  way 
they  do  good.  But  this  is  the  point  I  wish  to 
call  to  your  attention.  There  never  yet  has 
been  a  legal  device  by  which  people  could  be 
forced  to  be  any  better  than  they  wanted  to 
be, — never  in  any  department  of  life. 

The  one  thing  that  is  necessary  in  order  to 
carry  on  reforms,  and  keep  people  reformed,  is 
to  make  the  individual  men  and  women  better 
men  and  women  ;  and  there  is  no  other  way. 
The  world,  in  spite  of  all  that  is  said  in  regard 
to  drink,  is  unspeakably  more  temperate  to- 
day than  it  was  a  hundred  years  ago.  Have 
the  laws  done  much  about  it  ?  I  do  not  be- 
lieve it.  It  is  a  matter  of  civilisation,  a  matter 
of  public  opinion,  a  matter  of  social  ideals.  A 
hundred  years  ago  it  was  no  disgrace  for  a  man 
to  fall  under  the  table  after  dinner.  To-day 
it  would  be  a  burning  shame,  from  which  he 
would  never  recover.  Did  the  law  do  it  ? 
The  law  never  touched  it.  The  law,  through 
changing  the  ideals  of  the  people  in  regard  to 
what  is  fitting,  what  is  sweet,  what  is  lovely, 
may  have  something  to  do  with  it,  but  not 
directly. 


The  Church  237 

So  the  way  to  reform  this  world, — I  have  no 
objection  to  men's  trying  every  other  way  they 
please, — but  the  only  way  permanently  to  re- 
form the  world  is  to  make  the  men  and  women 
better  men  and  women,  so  that  you  will  not 
have  to  fence  them  out  of  this  place  or  that  by 
law,  but  so  you  can  trust  them  around  the  cor- 
ner  and  in  the  dark.  And  the  Church  is  the 
only  organisation  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  the 
one  distinct  and  definite  aim  of  which  is  to 
make  individual  men  and  women  better. 

So  in  the  industrial  departments  of  life. 
Every  little  while  they  are  talking  about  social 
reorganisation.  The  socialists  think,  if  they 
could  only  organise  society  after  this  particular 
method  or  that,  all  the  inequalities  and  evils  of 
the  world  would  be  done  away  ;  and  I  find 
there  are  half  a  dozen  different  kinds  of  social- 
ists, and  each  one  believes  that  the  other  five 
are  as  wrong  as  the  people  who  are  not  socialists 
at  all.  I  believe  they  are  all  wrong.  I  believe 
that  no  reorganisation  of  society  can  make  the 
particular  men  and  women  who  are  reorgan- 
ised any  better  than  they  were  before. 

What  you  need  for  justice  in  the  industrial  de- 
partments of  the  world  is  to  have  the  men  and 
women,  individually,  personally,  just.  Then, 
any  method,  or  no  method  at  all,  will  be  well. 


238  The  Church 

So,  politically,  we  have  had  a  fancy  that 
there  was  some  magic  in  a  republican  form  of 
government.  If  you  could  only  get  all  the 
world  republics,  all  the  world  would  be  free. 
Study  some  of  the  republics  in  Central  and 
South  America.  Study  some  of  the  ancient 
forms  of  government  that  were  called  repub- 
lican, and  you  will  find  there  is  just  as  much 
liberty,  just  as  much  justice,  in  any  form  of 
government  as  the  individuals  that  make  up 
that  government  want,  and  no  more.  There 
is  no  magic  in  the  organisation. 

Here,  again,  the  only  way  to  establish  lib- 
erty and  order  politically  over  the  world  is  to 
make  the  men  and  women  of  the  world  just 
and  true,  liberty-loving  and  orderly,  and  then 
— call  it  a  despotism,  if  you  will.  If  you  have 
an  angel  for  a  despot,  who  cares  ?  Call  it 
a  republic,  if  you  will. 

I  speak  of  these  extremes  only  that  you  may 
see  that  the  one  important  thing  is  what  men 
and  women  are.  And  again  let  me  emphasise, 
and  over  and  over,  that  the  Church  is  the  only 
institution  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  the  one 
definite  aim  and  object  of  which  is  to  make 
men  and  women  better,  better,  better, — always 
better.  By  all  this  I  do  not  mean  that  giving 
people  better  homes,  better  conditions,   laws 


The  Church  239 

more  nearly  equal — that  these  are  of  no  import- 
ance. I  only  mean  that  back  of  and  below  all 
there  is  the  man,  and  that  permanent  good 
rests  on  his  personal  improvement,  howev^er  it 
be  brought  about. 

The  Church  remain,  then  ?  The  Church 
will  remain,  in  my  judgment,  just  as  long  as 
man  remains  a  religious  being.  And  the  great 
object  of  the  Church  will  be  to  create  in  the 
lives  of  people  the  spirit  and  temper  of  the 
Christ.  That  is  the  object  of  the  Christian 
Church. 

What  was  that  ?  What  was  the  spirit  and 
temper  and  purpose  of  the  Christ  ?  I  have 
said  that  it  was  not  doctrinal ;  I  have  said  it 
was  not  sacramental  ;  it  was  not  after  the 
methods  of  authority  practised  by  human  or- 
ganisation. It  was  love  to  God  and  love  to 
man, — that  love  which  serves,  which  believes 
in  people  and  lifts  people,  and  makes  them 
worthy  of  believing  in  and  loving.  That  is 
the  method,  the  central  idea  and  purpose  of 
the  Christ,  the  one  great  thing  he  lived  for. 

So,  then,  as  this  Church  goes  on  in  the 
future,  is  it  very  important  what  kind  of  gov- 
ernment it  has,  what  kind  of  organisation  ?  I 
think  that  of  very  little  importance.  I  have 
always  been  in  favour  myself  of  a  democratic 


240  The  Church 

form  of  government  in  the  Church,  because  I 
am  a  democrat  in  my  poHtical  ideas.  It  seems 
to  me  that  the  Church  in  America,  that  which 
has  a  right  to  claim  itself  to  be  the  Church, 
ought  to  be  in  accordance  with  American 
methods  and  ideas, — that  is,  democratic, — a 
Church  governed  by  the  people,  as  we  claim 
that  the  city,  the  state,  the  country,  is  gov- 
erned by  the  people. 

That  is,  the  Church,  as  far  as  the  order  goes  ; 
but  it  is  all  a  secondary  matter.  Organise  in 
any  way  you  please,  so  you  use  the  power  of 
that  organisation  to  reproduce  the  Christ  life 
in  the  world. 

What  about  doctrines, — are  they  important  ? 
I  believe  they  are  very  important,  because 
they  are  either  true  or  false ;  and  if  they 
are  false,  they  mislead  you  if  you  follow  them. 
But,  fortunately,  there  are  thousands  of  people 
who  think  they  believe  things  that  they  never 
put  in  practice.  It  is  very  fortunate  for  the 
world  that. they  do  not.  They  put  in  practice 
a  great  deal  better  things  than  are  in  their 
creeds. 

So  the  important  thing  here  is,  not  what  you 
put  away  off^somewhere  as  a  statement  of  what 
you  think  you  ought  to  believe,  whether  you 
do  or  not,  but  what  you  really  do  believe  and 


The  Church  241 

carry  out  in  your  life.  Believe  what  you 
please,  but  never  do  what  Jesus  never  did,  and 
never  authorised  anybody  to  do, — never  put  a 
belief  at  the  front  door  of  the  Church  as  a 
fence  to  keep  any  wandering  soul  out.  Open 
wide  your  fellowship,  and  do  not  welcome  in 
the  saints  only, — they  can  get  along  outside ; 
welcome  in  tTie  sinners,  those  that  need,  the 
lost,  those  who  ought  to  be  helped. 

The  creed  important,  then  ?  Yes,  but  not 
as  important  as  your  feeling  and  your  life. 
How  about  rituals  and  sacraments?  I  said 
there  are  no  sacraments  in  the  sense  in  which 
the  Church  uses  that  word.  But  the  Lord's 
Supper,  baptism,  rituals,  printed  prayers,  cere- 
monies, processions,  particular  kinds  of  music, 
any  of  these  things, — what  are  they  ?  Why, 
use  any  of  them  ?  Use  them  all  freely,  if  you 
like  them,  if  they  help  you  ;  but  never  dare  to 
set  them  up  as  standards  for  other  people  ; 
never  dare  put  them  in  the  place  of  things 
that  are  more  important ;  never  dare  substitute 
them  for  life  and  service. 

The  Church — however  organised,  whatever 
it  believes,  whatever  its  order,  its  ritual — the 
Church  exists  to  create  the  life,  the  Christ  life, 
in  the  world  ;  and  when  the  Christ  life  is  cre- 
ated there  will  be  no  more  need  of  reformation 


242  The  Church 

of  vice  or  crime,  there  will  be  no  more 
talk  of  industrial  disputes  and  oppressions. 
There  will  be  no  more  political  corruption 
when  the  Christ  life  is  dominant  in  the  life  of 
all  the  men  and  women  in  the  world.  Then 
we  shall  be  one  family— brothers  and  sisters, 
children  of  the  same  Father,  each  of  us  anx- 
ious not  to  get  but  to  give,  not  to  hurt  but  to 
help,  not  to  pull  down  but  to  set  up.  We 
shall  have  established  on  earth  the  common- 
wealth of  God. 


M 


XI 

^  HELLS* 

Y  theme  is  Pagan  and  Christian — ancient 
and  modern — ideas  of  hell. 

This  is  not  an  a^rreeable  theme.  It  is  one 
from  the  treatment  of  which  I  should  prefer  to 
be  excused.  Perhaps  you  will  not  like  to  face 
it ;  and  yet  it  seems  to  me  that,  as  we  are 
dealing  with  the  great  religious  problems  of 
the  world,  this,  which  has  played  a  part,  per- 
haps as  great  as  any,  cannot  possibly  be  put 
one  side. 

I  hardly  dare  put  into  the  text  some  of  the 
quotations  which  I  have  gathered,  even  of 
things  that  have  been  said  by  modern  men. 
You  would  be  shocked.  You  would  perhaps 
question  my  right  to  trouble  you  with  them. 
You  would,  at  any  rate,  be  disgusted  with 
either  the  author  of  them  or  with  me  or  with 
both.  And,  possibly  with  slight  reference  to 
them,  I  may  push  them,  as  we  do  other  obscen- 

*  See  Appendix,  p.  — . 
243 


244  Hells 

ities  and  horrors,  into  an  appendix,  where  peo, 
pie  need  not  read  them  unless  they  desire. 

When  we  go  back  and  study  the  conditions 
of  early  human  life,  necessarily  barbaric,  we 
have  no  trouble  in  tracing  the  origin  of  the 
idea  of  hell.  Revenge  is  one  of  the  brutal  in- 
stincts of  the  human  race.  It  cannot  always 
have  its  way  in  this  world  ;  and  so  it  is  natural 
that  it  should,  if  possible,  carry  its  execution 
over  into  the  next.  In  the  early  conditions  of 
human  life,  not  so  much  was  made  of  what  we 
call  wronofs  between  men  and  men.  The 
moral  ideals  of  the  times  were  not  very  high, 
the  distinctions  not  very  fine. 

The  principal  offences  in  those  old  days 
were  supposed  to  be  against  the  chiefs  in  this 
world,  and  the  chiefs,  deified  and  invisible,  in 
the  other.  So  that  in  the  old-time  hells — the 
hells  of  the  barbaric  conditions  of  the  race — 
the  severest  punishments  were  for  cases  that 
we  should  call  to-day  lese  majcste,  insults  against 
the  ruling  power.  An  evil  wrought  to  a  fel- 
low-man might  not  count  as  very  serious.  It 
might  even  be  passed  over  altogether  if  it  were 
supposed  to  be  in  the  interest  of  the  tribe  or  to 
redound  to  the  honour  of  the  god  of  the  tribe. 
It  miofht  even  become  a  cause  for  reward  in- 
stead  of  punishment. 


Hells  245 

But,  in  all  the  specimens  that  we  have  that 
have  come  clown  to  us  from  those  old  times, 
the  most  horrible  penalties  have  been  paid  for 
wronging-  or  insulting  or  not  appreciating  the 
gods,  or  the  priests,  the  human  representatives 
of  the  gods.  For  example,  to  give  you  an 
illustration — I  do  not  irive  the  extract :  a 
woman  is  punished  through  countless  ages  in 
the  most  horrible  fashion,  because,  purely 
through  carelessness  and  by  accident,  when 
she  was  combing  her  head,  she  lets  one  of  her 
hairs  fall  into  the  sacred  butter,  which  was  set 
apart  to  be  burned  as  a  part  of  the  religious 
service.  This  is  a  specimen  of  the  ideas  of 
justice  which  were  maintained  in  those  far-off 
barbaric  days.  A  student  of  Louis  XI.  and 
his  dungeons  of  Loches,  or  later  of  the  Bastile, 
ought  hardly  to  wonder  at  what  such  people 
would  make  of  another  world. 

If  you  turn  to  ancient  Greece  and  Rome, — 
which  is  not  so  very  far  away  from  our  civili- 
sation,— you  all  remember  Ixion  and  Tantalus 
and  Sisyphus,  typical  cases  of  those  who  had 
been  punished  by  the  gods.  You  remember 
Prometheus,  bound  to  his  rock  in  Caucasus, 
while  the  eagle  tears  out  and  devours  his  heart. 
What  were  their  offences  ?  Not  human  immor- 
alities, as  we  regard  them,  at  all.     They  were 


246  Hells 

being  punished  for  slighting  or  insulting  the 
heavenly  powers.  And  these  punishments,  that 
the  ancient  world  devised,  were  for  how  long  ? 
I  cannot  stop  to  note  the  cases  from  China, 
from  India,  from  Persia,  from  all  over  the 
world.  Substantially  the  same  type  prevailed 
throughout  the  ancient  pagan  world.  The  same 
barbaric  ideas  were  manifest.  But  how  long 
were  their  hells  to  last  ?  I  give  you  one  illus- 
tration. One  of  the  writers  says  :  "  Suppose  a 
small  yoke  were  thrown  into  the  sea,  and  were 
to  drift  about  for  countless  ages  in  the  ocean  ; 
and  suppose  that  some  time  in  that  ocean, 
somewhere,  there  was  a  blind  tortoise  who 
was  to  live  on,  age  after  age,  and  once  in  a 
hundred  thousand  years  was  to  be  permitted  to 
come  to  the  surface.  What  would  the  chances 
be  of  his  coming  up  at  just  the  right  time  and 
place,  so  that  his  neck  would  be  thrust  through 
that  yoke  ?  When  that  happened,  possibly 
punishments  would  end."  You  see  the  pagans 
had  a  little- hope.  Their  ideas  of  time  are 
inconceivably  long ;  and  all  the  Oriental  lux- 
uriance of  their  imagination  is  lavished  in  an- 
attempt  to  picture  the  horrors  and  tortures 
of  this  invisible  world.  But  in  every  pagan 
nation  on  earth  there  was  left  one  tiny  ray  of 
hope, — never  an  endless  hell,  until  you  come 


Hells  247 

to  Christianity — never,  in  all  the  world.  This 
is  the  gift  to  the  race  of  the  Semite  people. 

Christianity  and  Mohammedanism,  which 
sprung  out  of  substantially  the  same  racial 
characteristics,  and  which  had  much  in  com- 
mon,— these  two  have  mvan  us  the  endless 
hells.  I  shall  come  to  touch  upon  that  matter 
a  little  later. 

Let  us  now  turn  and  consider  the  doctrine 
of  the  Old  Testament.  I  said  this  gift  of 
endless  hells  had  come  to  us  from  Semitic 
peoples.  And  yet,  strangely  enough,  through- 
out the  Mosaic  dispensation  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment there  is  no  teaching  of  anything  of 
the  kind.  There  is  not  a  place  in  the  Old 
Testament  where  "hell"  has  any  reference 
whatever  to  a  place  of  torment  in  the  spirit 
world.  The  original  for  it  is  the  Hebrew 
"Sheol,"  and  in  the  early  Hebrew  history  they 
did  not  even  have  any  Sheol.  The  worst 
punishment  in  the  Old  Testament  that  is  ever 
threatened  a2:"ainst  evil  is  death.  That  means 
physical  death  here  in  this  world.  All  that 
they  cared  for,  —  the  blessings  of  life,  the 
delights,  the  joys  of  seeing  the  sun  in  the 
heavens  and  the  trees  and  the  green  fields, 
and  hearing  the  rippling  of  the  waters,  look- 
ing   into    the    faces    of    friends,    of   wife    and 


248  Hells 

children,  of  being  recognised  by  their  fellow- 
townsmen,  holding  honourable  positions,  win- 
ning wealth  and  fame, — these  were  the  things 
that  the  Hebrew  desired ;  and  death  meant 
the  loss  of  them  all.  But  it  meant  nothing, 
after  you  had  passed  the  line  into  the  shadow. 
No  future  punishment  in  the  Old  Testament! 

When  we  come  to  the  new  one,  Paul  is  a  dis- 
tinct and  definite  Universalist.  He  teaches  it 
with  perfect  clearness.  After  a  certain  time, 
after  the  trials  and  temporary  punishments  and 
wanderings  of  the  people,  they  are  all, — those 
who  reject  Christ  now  and  those  who  accept 
him, — they  are  to  be  brought  to  his  accept- 
ance and  to  share  the  glories  of  his  kingdom. 
Then,  by  and  by,  that  kingdom  is  to  be  given 
up  to  God,  the  Father;  and  He  is  to  be  all 
in  all.  That  is  the  culmination  of  things,  as 
Paul  teaches  it ;  and  he,  as  you  will  remem- 
ber, is  the  first  of  the  New  Testament  writers, 
and  that  is  why  I  refer  to  him  first. 

The  Gospels  were  compilations  of  material 
slowly  gathered  in  the  course  of  a  good  many 
years,  and  at  last  brought  into  the  shape  in 
which  they  now  exist  by  utterly  unknown 
hands.  Nobody  knows  who  wrote  either  one 
of  them.  We  cannot  be  absolutely  certain, 
then,  of  a  single  text  in  the  New  Testament — 


Hells  249 

that  it  is  in  the  precise  shape  in  wliich  it  fell 
from  the  lips  of  Jesus.  We  can  only  be  sure 
in  the  main,  surer  than  anything  else,  of  the 
words  that  the  Apostle  Paul  himself  wrote ; 
for,  presumably,  they  have  been  transmitted 
to  us  accurately,  except  now  and  then  where 
there  was  a  mistake  made  by  a  copyist.  Prob- 
ably very  few  dogmatic  changes  were  made  in 
his  teachings. 

What,  then,  was  the  attitude  of  Jesus? 
Jesus  uses  language  which  is  very  strong. 
He  speaks  of  what  we  have  translated  as 
eternal  life  and  eternal  death.  There  is  op- 
portunity, I  think,  for  divided  opinion  as  to 
the  real  teaching  of  Jesus  on  the  subject  of 
the  duration  of  future  punishment.  There  is 
a  chance  for  an  honest  man  to  have  a  doubt. 
Yet  I  incline  strongly  to  the  belief  that  he  did 
not  teach  it ;  for  these  words  that  are  trans- 
lated "everlasting"  and  "eternal"  are  used  in 
no  end  of  places  where  they  cannot  mean 
literally  "endless."  The  mountains  are  called 
aionia7i ;  and  everyone  knows  that  they  will 
come  to  an  end.  And  many  other  things 
which  are  limited  as  to  time  have  this  one 
adjective  applied  to  them. 

I  believe,  then,  that  Jesus  does  not  teach 
eternal  or  absolutely  endless  punishment,  but 


250 


Hells 


that  he  speaks  of  it  in  this  indefinite  way  as  be- 
longing to  the  aionian  time.  The  New  Testa- 
ment speaks  about  this  present  "  aeon  "  and  the 
next  "a2on."  In  all  these  cases  the  words  cannot 
mean  endless.  I  am  inclined  to  believe,  then, 
that  Jesus  uses  these  words  indeterminately, 
as  was  the  custom  of  the  time,  and  that,  being 
an  Oriental,  he  indulged  in  figures  of  speech, 
as  he  taught  in  parables,  which  is  the  Oriental 
custom. 

Mozoomdar,  the  famous  leader  of  the  Brah- 
mo-Somaj  in  India,  speaking  about  Jesus,  said 
these  remarkable  and  significant  words  :  "  You 
Westerners  do  not  understand  him.  He  was 
an  Oriental.  We  Orientals  do  understand 
him.     You  make  an  Englishman  of  him." 

We  take  these  poetical,  legendary  state- 
ments, figures  of  speech,  and  harden  them 
down  into  actual  matters  of  fact.  This  is  my 
belief  in  regard  to  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  It 
seems  to  me  to  receive  confirmation  from  the 
fact  that  Paul  was  a  Universalist.  Paul  would 
hardly  have  taught  such  a  doctrine  if  he  had 
known  that  Jesus  taught  the  opposite. 

Then,  when  we  come  to  Origen,  one  of  the 
most  famous  of  the  early  Greek  Fathers  of  the 
Church,  he  was  distinctly  and  definitely  an 
out-and-out    Universalist.       Would   he    have 


Hells  251 

been,  could  he  have  been,  if^  Jesus  had  given 
any  plain  teaching  the  other  way  ?  For 
we  know  that  Origen  believed  that  Jesus  was 
a  supernatural  and  divine  being,  an  infallible 
teacher  ? 

But  soon  we  are  plunged  into  another  era. 
We  come  to  the  days  of  Tertullian.  He  was 
one  of  the  Latin  Fathers,  living  in  the  North 
of  Africa.  He  had  been  persecuted  ;  and  he 
was  one  of  those  men  who  are  capable  of  bitter 
resentment.  I  wish  to  quote  you  what  is  typi- 
cally his  way  of  looking  at  the  question  of 
everlasting  punishment,  which  he  expected  to 
be  meted  out  to  his  enemies.      I  quote  : 

"  At  this  greatest  of  all  spectacles,  the  last  and  eternal 
judgment,  how  shall  I  admire,  how  laugh,  how  rejoice, 
how  exult,  when  I  behold  so  many  proud  monarchs 
groaning  in  the  lowest  abyss  of  darkness  ;  so  many 
magistrates  liquefying  in  fiercer  flames  than  they  ever 
kindled  against  the  Christians ;  so  many  sage  philosophers 
blushing  in  red-hot  fires,  with  their  deluded  pupils; 
so  many  tragedians  more  tuneful  in  the  expression  of 
their  own  sufferings  ;  so  many  dancers  tripping  more 
nimbly  from  anguish  than  ever  before  from  applause  !  " 

This  is  old  Tertullian,  one  of  the  most 
famous  of  the  Church  Fathers ;  and  you  can 
see  how  little  pity  there  was  in  his  heart.  He 
shared  undoubtedly   the   feeling  that   Bishop 


252  Hells 

Burnet  has  preserved  for  us   in   a  quotation 
from  the  words  of  Queen  Mary  of  England  : 

"  As  the  souls  of  heretics  are  hereafter  to  be  eternally 
burning  in  hell,  there  can  be  nothing  more  proper  than 
for  nie  to  imitate  the  divine  vengeance  by  burning  them 
on  earth." 

An  ample  justification  of  persecution  !  This 
came  rapidly  to  be  the  general  tone  of  utter- 
ance. On  this  basis  of  eternal  wrath,  that  the 
Church  held  the  keys  and  ability  to  open  or 
shut  heaven  to  whomsoever  it  pleased, — and  it 
generally  pleased  to  open  heaven  only  to  those 
who  were  submissive  to  its  own  dictates  of 
authority, — you  can  imagine  what  power  the 
Church  wielded  throughout  the  Middle  Ages. 

The  man  who  was  forbidden  the  sacrament 
believed  that  he  was  shut  forever  out  of 
heaven,  and  imprisoned  forever  in  hell.  What 
power,  then,  did  the  Pope  wield,  when  a  king 
of  England,  or  no  matter  where  he  might  be, 
showed  any  signs  of  revolting  against  his 
authority  ?  .He  could  issue  a  bull,  forbidding 
the  Church  to  administer  the  sacraments  to 
the  common  people ;  and  the  people  in  their 
fright  would  rise  and  overturn  the  throne  if 
the  king  did  not  submit  to  the  papal  dictation. 
This  was  the  power  that  for  hundreds  of  years 
was  wielded  by  the  Pope. 


Hells  253 

In  the  old  classic  days,  suppose  Jupiter  had 
come  down  from  Olympus,  chosen  some  man, 
and  given  him  the  thunderbolt  to  hurl  at  any 
one  he  pleased,  how  the  whole  earth  would 
have  cowered  at  his  feet !  This  was  the  power 
possessed  by  the  Pope. 

You  are  familiar  with  the  Middle-Age  pic- 
ture of  hell,  as  Dante  has  given  it  to  us  by  his 
supreme  genius.  On  the  gate  is  written, 
"  Leave  hope  behind  all  ye  who  enter  here." 
And  then  inside  are  the  unbaptised  babies, 
virtuous  heathen, —  because  they  had  never 
heard  of  Christ,  never  had  a  chance  to  hear, — 
and  all  those  who  had  not  submitted  to  the 
Church,  enduring  every  kind  of  horror  that 
tlie  imagination  of  the  poet  could  devise  or 
depict.  Similar  is  the  picture  of  hell  that 
Milton  has  given.  And,  when  the  time  came 
for  the  Protestant  rebellion  against  the  Pope, 
there  was  no  rebellion  against  the  doctrine  of 
hell.  The  Protestants  were  all  to  be  sent  to 
hell  by  the  Pope  for  rebelling  against  the 
Church  ;  and  they  were  to  send  everybody  to 
hell  who  did  not  accept  their  authority,  the 
Pope  and  his  followers  included. 

It  was  simply  not  a  reformation  of  hell,  a  re- 
formation of  the  ideas  of  God's  justice,  but 
a  change  of  venue,  the  transfer  of  power  from 


254  Hells 

one  set  of  hands  to  another.  For  some  of  the 
very  worst  conceptions  of  hell  that  have  ever 
been  penned  have  come  from  Protestant 
preachers,  and  not  very  ancient  ones,  either. 

Jeremy  Taylor,  the  author  of  the  famous 
Holy  Living  and  Holy  Dying,  two  books  of 
exquisite  devotion,  and  who  is  called  the 
**  Shakespeare  of  divines,"  —  because  of  his 
wonderful  mastery  of  English  —  has  written 
one  of  the  worst  descriptions  of  hell  with  which 
I  am  acquainted. 

Jonathan  Edwards — you  know  his  reputa- 
tion in  that  direction  —  I  will  not  quote. 
Words  have  no  power  to  say  anything  worse 
about  God  than  Edwards  has  said.  The  poets, 
too,  have  found  in  this  subject  an  inspiration 
for  their  dismal,  horrible  songs. 

But  is  this  all  ancient  ?  When  I  speak  of 
these  matters  sometimes  people  say  to  me  : 
"  But  this  was  a  good  while  ago.  Nobody  be- 
lieves it  now.  Nobody  says  these  things  to- 
day." People  were  never  more  mistaken  in 
their  lives  than  in  holding  that  opinion.  These 
doctrines  are  still  in  the  Prayer  Book  of  the. 
Episcopal  Church.  In  the  Presbyterian  Con- 
fession of  Faith,  even  to  the  damnation  of  in- 
fants, they  are  all  there.  I  am  perfectly  well 
aware  that  the  ministers  here  in  New  York  do 


Hells  255 

not  preach  them  very  often.  But  I  am  also 
aware — and  so  you  may  be — that,  if  a  young 
man  apphes  to  enter  the  ministry,  and  is  found 
to  be  unsound  in  regard  to  this  doctrine,  he 
may  not  get  in. 

A  lady  here  in  New  York  this  winter  heard 
a  Baptist  minister  threatening  his  young  peo- 
ple in  a  revival  sermon.  He  told  them  that,  if 
they  did  not  repent,  they  were  likely  to  be 
striick  dead ;  or  that  God  might  open  the 
gates  of  hell,  and  let  them  hear  the  shrieks  and 
groans  of  the  damned.  This  in  New  York  city, 
this  very  winter  ! 

It  was  only  a  little  while  ago  that  the  Ameri- 
can Board,  representative  of  the  Congrega- 
tional Church,  the  most  liberal  of  liberal 
orthodox  churches  in  this  country,  refused  to 
send  a  man  as  a  missionary  to  Japan, — not  be- 
cause he  taught  universal  and  eternal  salva- 
tion, for  he  did  not  do  that^they  would  not 
send  him —  Why  ?  Because  he  wondered — 
he  did  not  assert  it  even — as  to  whether  there 
might  be  a  chance  in  the  next  world  for  a  man 
who  had  had  no  chance  in  this.  And  the  Con- 
o-reo;ationalists  would  not  let  him  o-o  as  a  mis- 
sionary  because  he  had  that  doubt  in  his  mind. 

Professor  Park,  one  of  the  most  famous 
theological    professors    that   this   country  has 


256  Hells 

produced  in  two  hundred  years,  when  this  dis- 
cussion was  raging,  said  :  We  must  hold  to 
the  belief  in  everlasting  punishment,  because, 
if  you  take  that  away,  you  "  cut  the  nerve  of 
missions."  When  I  was  a  boy  I  used  to  go  to 
a  missionary  concert  once  a  month,  and  be 
taught  that  the  heathen  were  pouring,  like  a 
Niagara  torrent,  day  and  night,  year  by  year, 
into  the  abyss  of  hell,  and  that  we  must  rouse 
ourselves  and  give  more  money  and  send  more 
people  to  save  them.  This  is  the  doctrine  still 
believed  to-day. 

I  have  been  on  a  tour  duringf  this  last  week 
trying  to  hunt  up  certain  of  these  things.  You 
go  to  the  headquarters  of  the  Presbyterian 
publishers  in  this  city,  or  the  Methodist  Book 
Concern,  or  the  Baptist  publishers,  or  go  to 
Funk  &  Wagnalls,  where  they  keep  the  books 
that  are  called  for  by  these  different  denomina- 
tions all  over  the  country,  and  you  will  find  them 
saturated  with  this  doctrine  of  hell  everywhere. 

The  worst  thing  Jonathan  Edwards  ever 
said  is  still  published  by  one  of  the  branches 
of  the  Baptist  Publishing  House  as  a  tract  for 
distribution  at  five  cents  a  copy.  These  things 
only  ancient  ? — only  in  some  far-off  place  ? 
While  I  am  on  this  matter,  I  must  give  you 
just  a  brief   extract.     It   is  quoted  from  one 


Hells  257 

of  the  sermons  of  the  man  who  during-  his 
lifetime  preached  to  more  people  than  any 
other  man  on  the  face  of  the  earth.  He 
quietly  remarked  to  a  friend :  I  am  not 
proud  of  it ;  but  if  I  were  inclined  to  pride  I 
might  point  to  the  fact  that  I  have  never  yet 
found  on  the  face  of  the  earth  a  hall  or  church 
large  enougl^to  hold  the  people  who  want  to 
come  and  hear  me  whenever  I  speak.  And 
he  was  a  preacher  in  the  city  which  is  the  cen- 
tre of  the  world's  civilisation.  I  refer  to  Spur- 
geon,  of  London,  of  course.  Now  let  me  give 
you  a  few  words.  I  will  not  quote  them 
all.     They  are  too  bad. 

"  Thou  wilt  sleep  in  the  dust  a  little  while.  When 
thou  diest,  thy  soul  will  be  tormented  alone, — that  will 
be  a  hell  for  it, — but  at  the  day  of  judgment  thy  body 
will  join  thy  soul  ;  and  then  thou  wilt  have  twin  hells. 
Body  and  soul  shall  be  together,  each  brimful  of  pain, 
thy  soul  sweating  in  its  inmost  pore  drops  of  blood,  and 
thy  body  from  head  to  foot  suffused  with  agony  ;  con- 
science, judgment,  memory,  all  tortured  ;  but  more,  thy 
head  tormented  with  racking  pains,  thine  eyes  starting 
from  their  sockets  with  sights  of  blood  and  woe,  thine 
ears  tormented  with 

'  Sullen  moans  and  hollow  groans, 
And  shrieks  of  tortured  ghosts  '  ; 

thine  heart  beating  high  with  fever,  thy.  pulse  rattling 
at  an  enormous  rate  in  agony,  thy  limbs  crackling 
like  the  martyrs  on  the  fire  and  yet  unburnt  ;  thyself 


258  Hells 

put  in  a  vessel  of  hot  oil,  pained,  yet  coming  out  un- 
destroyed  ;  all  thy  veins  becoming  a  road  for  the  hot 
feet  of  pain  to  travel  on  ;  every  nerve  a  string  on 
which  the  devil  shall  ever  play  his  diabolical  tune  of 
Hell's  Unutterable  Lament  ;  thy  soul  for  ever  and  ever 
aching,  and  thy  body  palpitating  in  unison  with  thy 
soul." 

Those  things  are  being  preached  and  cir- 
culated as  tracts,  in  order  to  scare  people  into 
a  certain  way  of  religious  belief  all  over  the 
world  to-day.  I  bought  this  copy  at  Funk  & 
Wagnalls  just  this  last  week  on  purpose  for 
this  extract. 

The  New  School  Presbyterian  Church 
recognises  the  fact,  and  expresses  wonder 
that  God  does  not  save  more,  but  supposes 
He  is  saving  just  as  many  as  he  cares  to.  Dr. 
Gardner  Spring,  who  used  to  be  the  minister 
of  the  Brick  Church  here  on  Fifth  Avenue, 
was  asked  one  day  why  God  did  not  save 
more.  And  he  said,  "  Because  He  saves  just 
as  many  as  he  chooses,  I  suppose." 

And  then  Hopkins,  one  of  the  famous  old 
Puritan  preachers,  goes  on  to  describe  how 
the  sight  of  this  pain  will  add  to  the  happi- 
ness of  heaven.  And  Jonathan  Edwards  de- 
clares that  a  part  of  the  glory  and  happiness 
of  the  saints  in  heaven  would  be  taken  away 
if  hell  were  destroyed. 


Hells  259 

Dr.  Momerie,  a  preacher  in  London,  still 
living  —  a  famous  preacher  of  the  Church  of 
England, — tells  us  he  heard  a  man  preach,  only 
a  few  years  ago,  a  sermon  in  which  he  said 
that  the  sight  of  all  these  things  would  only 
increase  the  joy  of  those  who  were  saved. 

And  so  I  might  go  on  giving  you  these  ex- 
tracts, until  you  were  wearied  of  reading  them 
and  your  souls  filled  with  horror. 

I  want  to  touch  for  one  moment  more  on  the 
question  of  infant  damnation.  The  Bishop  of 
Toronto  said,  not  long  ago,  that  every  child 
of  humanity,  except  the  Virgin  Mary,  is  from 
the  first  moment  of  conception,  months  be- 
fore it  is  born,  a  child  of  wrath,  hated  by  the 
blessed  Trinity,  belonging  to  Satan,  and 
doomed  to  hell.  That  is  the  Catholic  Bishop 
of  Toronto. 

Some  of  you,  at  any  rate,  are  familiar  with 
the  famous  poem  called  the  "  Day  of  Doom," 
published  in  Massachusetts  in  old  Puritan 
days  —  very  popular,  having  an  enormous  cir- 
culation. In  it  the  non-elect  infants  are  repre- 
sented at  the  judgment  day  as  arguing  with 
God  over  what  seems  to  them  the  hardship  of 
their  fate.  They  pleaded,  very  naturally,  that 
they  had  committed  no  sins — they  had  not 
done  anything  wrong.     The  only  thing  that 


26o  Hells 

they  were  responsible  for,  the  only  thing 
that  they  were  going  to  be  punished  for  —  cert- 
ainly they  were  not  responsible  for  it  —  was 
because  they  were  born  descendants  of  Adam. 
This  was  frankly  acknowledged  ;  and  yet  God 
is  represented  as  saying  to  them  (I  quote  one 
verse,  and  part  of  another)  : — 

"  You  sinners  are,  and  such  a  share 

As  sinners  may  expect, 
Such  you  shall  have  ;  for  I  do  save 

None  but  my  own  elect. 
Yet,  to  compare  your  sin  with  their 

Who  lived  a  longer  time, 
I  do  confess  yours  is  much  less, 

Though  every  sin  's  a  crime. 

"  A  crime  it  is,  therefore  in  bliss 
You  may  not  hope  to  dwell ; 
But  unto  you  I  shall  allow 
The  easiest  room  in  hell." 

That  was  all  that  could  be  found  for  an  infant 
who  it  was  confessed  had  never  done  anything 
wrongf. 

The  Roman  Catholic  Church  has  taught 
such  doctrine.  I  will  print  it  as  an  appendix. 
I  will  not  offend  your  eyes  by  placing  it  here. 
It  is  too  horrible, —  doctrines  describing  the 
punishment  of  children  in  hell. 


Hells  '        261 

And  here  a  little  while  ago, —  you  say  this  is 
ancient,  far  away,  nobody  believes  it  now, — 
within  six  years,  a  branch  of  the  High  Church 
in  England  published  a  catechism  for  child- 
ren, describing  the  horrible  tortures  that  child- 
ren suffer  in  hell  because  they  did  not  come 
to  the  minister  for  confession, —  nothing  else. 
That  is  the  Itind  of  doctrine  that  is  preached 
and  taught  by  some  High-Church  ministers  in 
England  to-day.  This  only  proves  what  I 
have  said  a  great  many  times,  that  the  world 
only  gets  civilised  very  slowly,  and  only  in 
some  few  places  at  that. 

Once  in  a  while  you  hear  a  note,  at  least,  of 
pity.  I  love  to  remember  Dr.  Albert  Barnes, 
the  famous  old  Presbyterian  minister  of  Phil- 
adelphia. His  Notes  I  used  in  studying  my 
Sunday-school  lessons  when  I  was  a  boy.  I 
thought  then  that  he  was  a  wise  man.  I  be- 
lieve still  that  he  was.  He  has  left  it  on  record 
not  that  he  doubted  this  eternal  punishment, 
but  the  heartbreak  with  which  he  felt  himself 
compelled  to  teach  it.  He  said  :  "  Other  peo- 
ple may  find  something  to  relieve  the  intensity 
of  their  grief  over  it.  But,  when  I  look  over 
the  world  and  see  so  many  people  going  to 
hell,  and  see  that  God  does  not  save  any  more 
of  them,  I  am  amazed  and  dumb  ;  and  it  is  all 


262  Hells 

dark  —  dark  —  dark  to  my  soul."  I  love  the 
old  man  for  oroincr  even  so  far  as  that. 

Now,  there  had  to  be  this  lurid  background. 
But  let  us  turn  to  something  a  little  more  reason- 
able— a  little  more  hopeful.  Why  shall  we 
accept  any  such  doctrine  as  this  ?  Why  shall 
we  not  revolt  and  fight,  with  every  fibre  of  our 
intellectual  and  moral  being  aflame  with  indig- 
nation, against  the  barbarism  of  men  and  the 
horrors  that  they  have  piled  up,  with  which  to 
blacken,  if  possible,  the  face  of  the  Almighty  ? 
Let  me  say,  if  anything  of  this  sort  be  true, 
ought  not  God,  at  any  rate,  to  have  told  the 
world  of  it  so  plainly  that  there  could  have  been 
no  possible  mistake  ?  But  there  has  been  con- 
fusion on  the  question  and  dispute  about  it 
from  the  very  first,  so  that  there  is  no  clear 
revelation  on  the  subject.  If  we  are  in  such  a 
condition  as  this,  ought  He  not  to  have  told  us 
some  reasonable  explanation  of  that  fact  ? 

What  explanation  have  we  ?  We  have  an 
old  Persian  'fable,  which  the  Jews  did  not  even 
originate,  and  did  not  know  anything  about  for 
hundreds  of  years,  and  which  tells  us  an  utterly 
childish  and  incredible  story  of  the  whole 
human  race  beingf  damned  because  Eve  influ- 
enced  Adam  to  eat  the  apple  of  a  particular 
tree.     The   Almighty  condescends  to  give  us 


Hells  26 


J 


only  that, —  coming-  round  about  through  Per- 
sia, after  this  world  had  been  in  existence  thou- 
sands and  thousands  of  years,  and  millions  and 
millions  of  souls  had  been  going  down  to 
hell  because  they  had  not  even  heard  that 
much  ? 

If  we  are  i^  this  kind  of  condition,  ought  we 
not  to  be  told  plainly  how  to  get  out  of  it  ? 
Are  we  ?  Has  there  been  any  revelation  to 
explain  ?  The  Greek  Church  will  tell  you  one 
way  ;  the  Catholic  another.  Forty  Protestant 
Churches  will  tell  you  forty  other  ways.  Paul 
tells  you  one  thing;  Jesus  tells  you  another 
thing.  Nobody  tells  you  anything  with  au- 
thority ;  so  that  the  most  honest,  reverent,  ten- 
der-hearted and  loving  man  in  the  world  cannot 
find  which  way  he  ought  to  go,  to  secure  sal- 
vation for  himself  or  power  to  lead  his  brother 
or  friend  into  a  way  that  is  safe.  Here  is  the 
actual  condition  of  things.    . 

Then,  another  consideration.  Ultimately,  if 
God  be  Almighty,  and  if  He  be  all-wise, — let 
me  say  it  with  all  the  reverence  with  which  I 
can  utter  myself,^He  and  He  alone,  in  the  last 
analysis,  is  responsible  for  this  universe.  Did 
He  create  creatures  that  He  could  not  control  ? 
Then  is  He  God  ?  Did  He  create  creatures 
that  He  could  control  and  would  not  ?     What 


264  Hells 

right  had  He  ?  At  common  law,  you  here  in 
New  York,  I  here  in  New  York,  any  man,  in 
England  or  America,  is  held  to  be  legally  and 
morally  responsible  for  causes  that  he  sets  in 
motion.  And  he  has  no  right  to  set  a  cause  in 
motion  that  he  cannot  control,  so  that  it  shall 
result  in  no  end  of  evil  to  others.  Shall  not 
the  God  of  all  the  earth  do  as  right  as  the  com- 
mon law  expects  us  to  do  ? 

What  would  be  capable  of  proving  it  ?  Such 
a  doctrine  of  hell  as  has  been  preached  for 
nearly  two  thousand  years  ?  What  would  be 
capable  of  proving  it?  On  what  authority 
could  I  conceive  myself  as  accepting  it?  If  it 
were  printed  in  letters  of  fire  on  every  page  of 
the  Bible, —  the  clear  declaration  printed  as 
Jonathan  Edwards  or  old  Doctor  Hopkins  or 
Spurgeon  might  have  written  it  ?  Would 
I  believe  it  ?  No  !  I  would  not  believe  any 
statement,  or  any  Bible,  or  any  million 
Bibles,  that  turns  my  God  into  an  incarnate 
devil.  I  cannot  conceive  of  any  being  so 
utterly  foul  and  horrible,  so  utterly  to  be  de- 
tested, so  utterly  to  be  scorned  and  spurned  by 
every  decent  man,  as  the  God  capable  of  creat- 
ing hell  as  these  men  have  pictured  it.  All  the 
criminals  of  earth  rolled  into  one  would  be  a 
character  white  when  placed  beside  him  by  con- 


Hells  265 

trast.     For  He — almighty,  all-wise — can  do  as 
he  will — and  docs  this  ?    As  Tennyson  sings  : — 

"  The  god  of  love  and  hell  together — he  cannot  be 
thought ; 
If  there  be  such  a  god  may  \\\q.  great  God  curse  him 
and  bring  him  to  naught." 

I  am  aware  that  there  are  men  at  this  pre- 
sent time  in  the  old  churches  who  are  repudi- 
atinof  these  ideas.  Dr.  Gcorcre  A.  Gordon,  of 
the  Old  South  Church  in  Boston,  is  frankly  an 
out-and-out  Universalist,  and  scorns  these 
things  as  I  do.  Dr.  Lyman  Abbott  holds  a 
curious  and  to  me  utterly  inexplicable  position 
by  saying  that  he  believes  God  will  save  every 
human  soul  that  He  can  ;  but  he  wonders 
whether  He  has  not  made  them  so  free  that  they 
can  do  as  they  please  in  spite  of  God.  If  He 
has,  I  wonder  why  he  prays  to  God  to  save 
them.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  position  is  ut- 
terly illogical,  irreconcilable,  utterly  immoral, 
confoundinij  that  which  is  true  with  that  which 
is  fable.  Here  are  these  doctrines,  indorsed 
and  proclaimed  in  the  effort  to  get  up  revivals 
all  over  this  country, — all  over  Europe.  They 
are  the  mainspring,  motive  force,  of  those  who 
are  engaged  in  these  operations. 

Is  there  anything  to  prove  this  doctrine  to 
me  ?     If    it   were    written    in  letters  of   stars 


266  Hells 

across  the  face  of  the  heavens,  I  would  rather 
believe  that  the  universe  was  one  infinite  mad- 
house— that  we  were  misreading  the  facts,  or 
that  there  were  no  facts,  that  all  was  one  hor- 
rible mockery — than  that  God,  almighty,  all- 
wise,  all-loving,  could  do  such  things  as  they 
have  said  He  has  done. 

If  I  am  mistaken,  and  if  by  and  by,  when  I 
pass  through  the  gate  and  into  the  shadow, 
I  am  haled  before  the  judgment  throne,  and 
charged  with  misrepresenting  the  truth  as  God 
has  revealed  it  to  men,  even  then  I  will  take 
my  cue  from  the  author  of  Job,  and  say  :  "  Let 
me  plead  my  cause  at  His  feet."  O  Father,  I 
believed  Thee  better  than  they  said  ;  and,  if  I 
must  be  damned  forever  for  believinor  Thee 
good,  then  let  me  go  with  this  conviction  into 
the  outer  darkness.  I  believed  in  Thee  ;  and, 
though  Thou  dost  slay  me,  still  I  do  believe  in 
Thee  ! 

One  other  point  I  must  deal  with.  Is  there 
no  punishment  for  sin?  Certain  people  have 
made  such  horrible  representations  of  this 
arbitrary,  unnatural  punishment  that  people 
react  from  that  to  unlimited  and  unbridled 
license.  Punishment  ?  Is  there  no  punish- 
ment for  sin  in  this  world?  Is  there  no  pun- 
ishment for  wronor-doinor  here?     Is  there  no 

o  o 


Hells  267 

punishment  in  the  nature  of  things  ?  The 
writer  of  that  text,  Paul,  knew  what  he  was 
saying,  when  he  uttered,  "  Whatsoever  a  man 
soweth,  that  shall  he  also  reap." 

Here  is  the  principle  in  the  light  of  which 
the  rational  hell  must  be  conceived  and  de- 
scribed, and  by  every  wise  man  must  be 
averted.  Pur?ishment  in  the  sense  of  outside 
arbitrary  infliction — never,  anywhere.  There  is 
no  such  thing  in  the  universe.  Reward,  as  an 
outside,  arbitrary  gift  ?  Again,  no  trace  of  it 
anywhere  in  the  universe.  The  old  Jews 
thought  that  God  paid  people  for  being  good 
by  giving  them  a  long  life,  a  lot  of  wives  and 
children,  a  lot  of  good  cattle,  and  honor  and 
prosperity.  They  found  that  it  was  not  true. 
They  believed,  at  first,  that,  if  a  man  did 
wrong,  he  was  punished  by  being  made  sick, 
or  his  property  being  taken  from  him,  or  his 
children,  or  by  being  disgraced  in  the  public 
eye,  or  some  such  thing.  But  years  went  by  ; 
and  they  found  that  that  was  not  true.  They 
came  at  last  face  to  face  with  the  fact  that  bad 
men  get  rich  and  bad  men  seem  to  have  a  fme 
time  in  certain  directions,  and  that  good  men 
are  poor  and  that  good  men  can  be  diseased 
in  body  and  suffer.  And  they  had  to  revise 
all  their  conceptions.     Hiey  found  after  a  time 


268  Hells 

what  we  are  beginning  to  find  out, — for  it  is 
very  modern,  indeed, — that  there  is  no  such 
thing  in  the  world  as  God  giving  a  man  some- 
thing because  he  is  good,  or  taking  something 
away  from  him  because  he  is  bad,  in  the  com- 
mon, arbitrary  use  of  those  terms.  What  takes 
the  place  of  that  ?  Laws  unchanging  and  re- 
sults inevitable  !  That  is  what  we  have  got  to 
face  in  this  universe  in  which  we  find  ourselves. 
Take  this  body  of  mine.  I  break  a  law  of 
health.  What  does  that  mean  ?  I  break  one 
of  the  conditions  ;  every  part  of  my  body  is 
hemmed  in  with  forces  and  facts  and  conditions 
which  I  call  the  laws  of  my  body.  If  I  keep 
inside  them,  I  am  well.  And,  if  I  am  well,  the 
action,  the  performance  of  every  function  of 
my  body  is  a  joy.  It  is  a  pleasure  to  breathe, 
if  my  lungs  are  in  good  order.  If  they  are 
diseased,  it  is  distress  and  anguish.  It  is 
pleasant  to  see,  if  my  eyes  are  as  they  ought 
to  be.  Otherwise,  it  is  a  pain  to  open  them, 
and  let  the  light  strike  them.  So,  if  I  keep 
within  the  laws  of  my  body  in  every  direction, 
am  I  rewarded  ?  Not  in  the  sense  of  having- 
an  arbitrary  gift  bestowed  upon  me,  but  a  cert- 
ain result  inyeitably  follows ;  and  it  is  a  good 
result — health,  and  all  the  pleasure  and  power 
that  come  from  being  well. 


Hells  269 

Suppose  I  break  one  of  the  Jaws,  no  matter 
whether  on  purpose  or  by  accident.  Suppose 
I  take  arsenic,  not  knowing  it  is  arsenic.  Sup- 
pose I  step  on  a  place  in  the  sidewalk,  think- 
ing it  is  solid,  and  it  gives  way,  and  I  break 
my  leg.  I  am  not  morally  to  blame,  but  the 
law  of  my  body  has  been  broken,  and  pain 
results.     And  it  is  the  inevitable  result. 

Now  just  take  that  illustration,  and  carry  it 
all  the  way  up  through  your  intellectual  nature, 
your  moral  nature,  your  spiritual  nature, — the 
relation  in  which  you  stand  or  ought  to  stand 
to  your  fellow-men, — the  relation  in  which  you 
oucrht  to  stand  to  God.  We  can  imaoine  an 
ideal  state  of  society.  We  can  imagine  a  man 
so  circumstanced  that  the  air  about  him,  the 
earth,  the  plants,  the  grass — everything  should 
minister  to  his  delight  and  power ;  that  his 
house  should  be  so  built  that  every  need  and 
want  and  pleasure  should  be  met ;  that  he 
should  be  so  surrounded  by  friends,  so  related 
to  his  fellow-men  in  business,  that  everything 
should  minister  to  that  which  is  irood.  He 
would  be  perfectly  happy.  He  is  in  heaven, 
we  say.  That  shows,  of  course,  that  heaven  is 
not  essentially  a  particular  place. 

You  take  a  man  who  is  diseased,  who  is  dis- 
ordered in  every  sort  of  way,  and  put  him  into 


270  Hells 

a  beautiful  garden.  Does  the  beautiful  garden 
make  him  happy  ?  You  never  can  get  into 
any  more  of  heaven  in  this  world  or  any  other 
than  you  first  get  into  yourselves.  You  must 
stay  in  the  hells  you  make  for  yourselves  just 
as  long  as  you  choose  to  keep  busy  making 
them.  In  other  words,  never  in  this  world  or 
any  other  world  will  you  be  able  to  escape 
yourselves.  Never  in  this  world  or  any  other 
world  will  you  be  able  to  escape  the  terrible 
shadow  of  your  own  actions. 

You  remember  that  Oriental  apologue  of  the 
soul  newly  arrived  in  the  other  life,  who  is  flit- 
ting on  through  dim  and  shadowy  spaces,  and 
hearing  footsteps  pursuing,  turns,  and  sees  a 
shape  that  is  full  of  dread  and  horror  to  him. 
He  stops,  and  says,  "What  art  thou  ?"  And 
the  answer  comes  :  "  I  am  thine  own  actions. 
Day  and  night  I  follow  thee."  There  is  the 
real  hell  of  the  real  universe,  ordained  by  the 
real  God,  .absolutely  inevitable;  and  there  is 
no  getting  out  of  it  in  this  world  or  any  other 
world,  whether  you  stay  in  it  one  year  or  a 
million  years,  except  by  getting  yourselves 
right.  For  right  means  heaven,  and  wrong 
means  hell.    - 

Omar  Khayyam  says,  as  translated  by 
Edward  Fitzgerald  : 

O 


Hells  '     271 

"  Heaven  but  the  vision  of  fulfilled  desire, 
And  hell  the  shadow  of  a  soul  on  fire." 

And  Milton  dives  deeper  into  reality  than 
the  popular  meaning  of  his  poem  when  he 
makes  Satan  say,  "  Myself  am  hell."  He  can- 
not flee  from  himself.  So  the  only  way  for  us 
to  escape  the  only  real  hell,  of  which  these 
others  are  horrtble,  blasphemous  caricatures,  is 
for  us  to  escape  everything  selfish,  everything 
wrong,  every  transgression  of  every  condition 
of  high,  honorable,  and  true  living  ;  and,  escap- 
ing these,  we  become  wrought  over  at  last  into 
the  perfect  image  of  the  Divine. 


XII 

HEAVENS 

AS  was  said  in  the  last  chapter  concerning 
human  behefs  as  to  sufferings  in  a  future 
condition,  so  it  may  be  said  in  this  that  our 
beUefs  in  coming  joys  spring  naturally  out  of 
human  thinking  and  feeling.  People  have  al- 
ways been  conscious  of  the  fact  that  life  did 
not  meet  their  ideals  ;  they  have  felt  that  they 
had  not  attained  the  things  which  they  desired  ; 
and,  while  sometimes  they  have  been  obliged 
to  confess  that  this  failure  was  their  own  fault, 
perhaps  more  frequently  they  have  been  ready 
to  bring  some  charge  against  the  nature  of 
things,  and  say  that  without  any  fault  of  their 
own  they  had  suffered  and  failed. 

And  whether  this  has  been  true  concerning 
themselves  or  not,  as  they  have  looked  abroad 
over  the  face  of  society,  they  have  seen  here  a 
man  apparently  rewarded  who  did  not  deserve 
it,  and  here  some  one  suffering,  passing 
through  a  life  of  deprivation  and  trial,  who,  so 

272 


Heavens  '       273 

far  as  any  one  could  find  out,  was  God's  saint. 
The  suffering  has  seemed  '  to  be  entirely 
undeserved. 

And  so  there  has  sprung  up  in  the  heart  of 
man,  as  naturally  as  the  grasses  and  flowers 
grow  in  spring,  the  belief  that  sometime  and 
somewhere  these  inequalities  were  to  be  equal- 
ised ;  the  peof^le  who  deserved  to  suffer  would 
suffer,  the  people  who  deserved  to  be  happy 
would  be  happy.  If  the  universe  were  just, 
so  they  have  reasoned,  it  is  inevitable  that  this 
should  be.  And  as  they  have  not  always  seen 
these  equalities  brought  about  during  the  brief 
span  of  our  human  life,  and  as  they  have  gen- 
erally believed  in  a  continued  life  beyond  the 
grave,  they  have  felt  that  these  rectifications 
were  only  being  postponed — that  over  yonder, 
somewhere,  wherever  the  place  of  good  or  evil 
might  be  located,  things  would  be  made  to 
come  rio^ht. 

By  a  process  of  reasoning  like  this — natural, 
I  say,  as  the  opening  of  a  flower  in  May — the 
beliefs  have  come  to  pass.  But,  as  to  the 
nature  of  these  heavens,  we  shall  see  that 
another  principle  has  been  at  work  which  has 
determined  whether  they  shall  seem  to  us  to- 
day high  or  low,  worthy  or  unworthy.  They 
have  been  governed — these  imaginings,  these 


2  74  Heavens 

picturings — by  the  intellectual,  the  imaginative, 
the  pictorial  capacity  of  the  people.  Heaven 
has  been  made  up  of  the  things  which  the 
majority  of  the  people  has  desired,  has  chiefly 
valued. 

Take  our  North  American  Indian,  and  the 
kind  of  heaven  that  most  of  us  would  be  anx- 
ious for  would  not  seem  to  be  the  one  that  he 
longs  for  and  dreams  about.  Perhaps  Pope, 
in  that  well-worn  passage  of  his,  has  given  us  a 
satisfactory  picture  of  what  this  type  of  man 
would  think  of  and  desire.  Pope  is  looked 
upon  sometimes  as  worn  out  as  a  poet,  and  yet 
in  the  dictionaries  of  quotations  you  will  find 
there  are  more  passages  taken  from  him  to-day 
than  from  any  other  English  poet  except  Shakes- 
peare. He  had  a  marvellous  mastery  of  expres- 
sion. Read  over  ten  or  a  dozen  lines,  which 
will  seem  trite,  perhaps  ;  but  the  passage,  as  a 
whole,  is  one  of  the  finest : 

"  Lo,  the  poor  Indian  !  whose  untutor'd  mind 
Sees  God  in  clouds,  or  hears  Him  in  the  wind  ; 
His  soul  proud  science  never  taught  to  stray 
Far  as  the  solar  walk  or  milky  way  ; 
Yet  simple  nature  to  his  hope  has  given 
Behind  the  cloud-topp'd  hill  an  humbler  heaven  ; 
Some  safer  world,  in  depth  of  woods  embraced. 
Some  happier  island  in  the  watery  waste, 
Where  slaves  once  more  their  native  land  behold, 


Heavens  275 

No  fiends  torment,  no  Christians  thirst  for  gold  : 

To  be,  contents  liis  natural  desire, 

He  asks  no  angel's  wing,  no  seraph's  fire, 

But  tliinks,  admitted  to  that  equal  sky. 

His  faithful  dog  shall  bear  him  company." 

There  is  the  natural  heaven  of  the  man  who 
is  on  that  intellectual  and  imaginative  plane. 

We  turn  for  another  type,  and  we  find  the 
Norseman.  He,  during  his  life,  if  he  were 
physically  strong  enough,  was,  above  all  things, 
a  warrior.  And  they,  like  most,  I  think,  of 
their  descendants,  were  capable  drinkers.  The 
Norseman's  desire  was  to  fight,  and  to  have 
plenty  of  stimulating  mead  to  drink.  So  his 
heaven  was  the  halls  of  Walhalla,  where  he 
could  drink  and  fight  all  day  long,  be  hewed 
into  I  do  not  know  how  many  pieces,  and  yet 
be  in  condition  to  go  through  the  same  thing 
another  day.     This  was  his  idea  of  bliss. 

The  Oriental,  such  as  the  Mohammedan 
dream  appeals  to,  makes  his  heaven  out  of  a 
harem  embowered  in  flowers  that  never  fade 
and  fragrance  that  never  palls.  And  so  you 
will  find  different  grades  and  types  of  human- 
ity dreaming  of  finding  in  the  other  world  the 
things  which  they  desire. 

In  classic  Greece  and  Rome  nobody  went  to 
heaven,    in    the   modern    sense  of  that  word. 


276  Heavens 

That  is,  nobody  went  to  live  where  the  gods 
were,  except  now  and  then  a  famous  hero, 
chosen  as  a  favourite  by  some  one  of  the  celes- 
tial powers.  Where  did  they  go  ?  To  the  Is- 
lands of  the  Blest,  far  away,  towards  the  sunset ; 
they  went  to  the  Elysian  Fields  in  the  under- 
world. And  what  did  they  do  ?  They  remem- 
bered the  world  they  had  lost.  They  lived 
over  in  shadowy  fashion  their  old  pleasures 
and  aims  ;  philosophers  discussed,  poets  read 
their  verses.  But,  on  the  whole, — there  was  no- 
thing they  looked  forward  to,  nothing  bright, 
or  cheery,  or  hopeful  to  them  ;  for  Homer 
makes  Achilles  describe  this  underworld  as  a 
place  anything  but  desirable.  He  says  he 
would  rather  be  a  keeper  of  swine  on  earth 
than  to  be  the  kinor  of  all  the  underworld. 

So  this  underworld  life  has  never  been  spe- 
cially desirable  ;  and  it  certainly  to-day  does 
not  satisfy  the  dreams  of  the  thinker  who  dares 
to  believe  that  there  is  a  heaven  somewhere  to 
be  found  for  those  who  have  lived  and  wrouofht 
nobly  for  their  fellows  here  below  the  stars. 

When  we  come  to  consider  the  attitude  of  the 
Old  Testament  towards  it, — as  we  must,  in  trac- 
ing up  from^  the  beginning  the  heaven  of  to- 
day,— we  find  (as  I  have  had  occasion  to  point 
out  before  and  more  than  once  in  other  con- 


Heavens  277 

ncctions),  that  the  early  Hebrew  writers  had  iki 
behef  in  continued  existence  after  death.  But 
the  punishments  in  the  Old  Testament,  and  the 
rewards, —  this  is  substantially  true, —  take  ac- 
count simply  of  this  life.  "  Hell,"  as  you  know, 
never  means  a  place  of  torture,  but  only  a 
shadowy,  underground  abode.  It  comes  from 
the  same  root  from  which  is  also  derived  our 
word  "hole,"  or  "hollow,"  a  scoopcd-out  place, 
a  cavern.  So  heaven  is  always  a  place  above 
the  stars. 

But,  in  the  Old  Testament,  death  is  the  pun- 
ishment for  extreme  wrong-doing-;  and  life, — 
life  prolonged,  life  honoured,  life  enriched,  life 
made  happy  by  many  children,  life  filled  with 
all  the  things  that  men  care  for, —  this  is  the 
greatest  reward  that  is  ever  offered  for  good- 
ness. And  the  deprivation  of  these  is  the  worst 
thing  that  is  ever  threatened  in  the  way  of 
punishment. 

And  yet  there  came  about — and  note  how 
natural  the  steps — a  radical  change  of  belief. 
The  Hebrews  came  after  a  time  to  believe  in 
the  coming  of  a  Messiah,  some  one  who  was  to 
give  their  people  dominance  and  power  all  over 
the  world,  when  they  were  faithful  enough  to 
their  God  ;  and  there  were  people  who  held 
this  faith,  cherished  it,  and  looked  forward  to 


278  Heavens 

the  coming  of  this  Messiah,  who  were  dying 
one  after  another,  age  after  age.  And  this  did 
not  seem  just.  They  said,  The  people  who 
have  beheved  in  and  anticipated  the  coming  of 
the  Messiah  ought  to  share  in  his  glory  when 
he  does  come.  They  have  sacrificed  for  him, 
suffered  for  him,  believed  in  him.  May  we  not 
believe  that  they  will  share  in  His  triumph  ? 
So  they  came  to  believe  that  the  good  people 
who  had  believed  in  and  laboured  for  the  Mes- 
siah would  be  raised  from  the  underground 
world,  and  be  a  part  of  his  victory  when  he 
came. 

Out  of  this  idea  sprang  the  belief  in  the 
resurrection  of  the  just  among  the  ancient 
Hebrews  ;  and  by  and  by  they  came  to  hold 
the  idea  that  these  people  were  not  quite  dead, 
not  really  dead.  They  were  in  a  shadowy, 
underground  world,  which  they  called  Sheol. 
And  after  a  time  they  came  to  believe  that  the 
bad  people  were  not  dead  either.  They,  also, 
were  in  this  underground  Sheol ;  and  they  also 
were  to  be  raised  up  and  see  the  triumph  of  the 
just,  and  so  be  punished  for  their  wickedness 
and  unbelief,  and  then  sent  back  to  the  shadows 
again. 

This  came  to  be  the  popular  faith  ;  and  so, 
when  Jesus  came,  there  existed  in  the  minds 


Heavens  279 

of  the  Jewish  people  this  land  of  Sheol,  under- 
neath the  surface  of  the  earth,  divided  into 
two  parts, — Paradise,  where  the  good  souls 
were,  and  Gehenna,  where  the  bad  were. 
Hades  is  a  Greek  translation  of  Sheol,  cover- 
ing the  whole  underground  world.  Paradise 
and  Gehenna  were  close  together,  the  dividing 
line  not  wider  tlian  a  hair.  This  was  the  belief 
at  the  time  of  John  the  Baptist  ;  and  when 
Jesus  said  to  the  penitent  thief  on  the  cross, 
"  To-day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in  Paradise," 
he  did  not  mean  heaven  ;  he  meant  the  para- 
dise-side of  Sheol,  or  Hades,  in  this  under- 
ground world.  For  that  is  where  Jesus  went 
down  to  hell ;  and  the  old  doctrine  of  the 
early  Church  was  not  that  he  went  there  as  to  a 
place  of  punishment,  but  to  the  underground 
regions,  as  did  any  other  human  soul. 

And  you  must  note  that  up  to  this  time  in 
the  history  of  the  Hebrew  people  only  two 
men  had  gone  to  heaven,— Enoch  and  Elijah. 
It  is  very  curious  that  the  Bible,  when  speak- 
ing of  them,  says  in  neither  case  that  they  went 
to  heaven,  where  God  is  ;  but  the  popular  tra- 
dition was  that  they  did.  They  were  the  only 
two. 

Jesus  went  down  to  this  underground  world, 
and    preached    to    the   people    in    Hades,  — 


28o  Heavens 

preached  to  the  wicked,  preached  to  the  good, 
and  announced  to  them  the  cominof  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  and  their  resurrection  ;  and 
the  tradition  is  that,  when  he  left  this  under- 
ground world,  he  led,  the  old  Hebrew  phrase 
is,  "  captivity  captive," — that  is,  he  led  a  multi- 
tude of  these  captives  who  had  been  there 
since  they  had  died,  some  of  them  since  the 
beginning  of  the  world,  and  took  them  up  with 
him  on  high  to  the  presence  of  God  and  the 
angels.  It  was  only  after  that  that  anybody 
ever  began  to  go  to  heaven,  in  the  modern 
sense  of  that  term. 

I  need  not  go  into  these  matters  in  any 
detail.  I  want  simply  that  you  should  under- 
stand the  growth  of  the  doctrine  ;  for  you  can- 
not comprehend  the  significance  and  meaning 
of  the  different  phases  of  belief  that  are  held 
to-day  unless  you  know  how  they  have  come 
into  existence. 

After  the  time  of  Jesus,  after  the  time  had 
passed  by  when  they  looked  for  his  resurrec- 
tion, they  still  held  that  there  was  a  multitude 
of  these  souls  waiting,  for  an  indefinite  time, 
in  the  underworld  for  the  second  coming  of 
Jesus,  on  whjch  occasion  they  were  to  be  raised 
from  the  dead.  And  this  suggests  a  point  that 
you  need  very  carefully  to  note, — the  resurrec- 


Heavens  281 

tion  of  Christ,  the  resurrection  of  any  soul,  in 
early  discussions  of  reli^^ious  questions  did  not 
necessarily  or  primarily  have  any  reference  to 
the  coming  out  of  the  grave  of  the  body.  It 
was  the  cominir  out  of  this  underworld  of  the 
soul, — the  real  person  coming  up  out  of  this 
place  and  ascending  on  high  and  being  with 
God  and  His  angels. 

You  are  familiar,  in  a  general  way,  with  the 
descriptions  of  the  early  Christian  times  of  this 
perfect  condition.  Saint  John,  as  tradition  has 
it,  was  imprisoned  on  Patmos.  As  a  matter  of 
fact,  nobody  knows  who  wrote  this  book  of 
Revelation.  It  is  held  by  many  of  the  best 
scholars  to  be  an  old  Hebrew  production,  which 
was  wrought  over  by  Christian  hands.  Whether 
John  was  the  author  of  it,  a  person  named  John, 
or  whether  this  John  was  our  apostle  John,  no- 
body knows ;  and,  of  course,  it  does  not  mat- 
ter. But  the  vision  represents  the  ideally 
perfect  condition  of  the  people  who  have  come 
up  from  the  lower  world,  and  who  have  shared 
in  the  expected  resurrection,  have  met  the  Lord 
in  the  air,  and  have  been  transformed  into  his 
beauty.  This  perfect  city  was  a  perfect  cube. 
They  lavished  on  its  description  everything  that 
they  could  think  of  in  the  way  of  beauty  and 
glory.     It  had  streets  of  gold,  a  river  running 


282  Heavens 

through  the  midst  of  it,  beautiful  trees  bearing 
fruit  every  month,  whose  leaves  were  for  the 
healing  of  the  nations, — everything  that  the  po- 
etic power  of  the  time  could  fancy  was  used  in 
setting  forth  the  wonder  of  this  city. 

And  yet  you  will  note  one  limitation  about 
it, —  a  limitation  I  shall  have  to  refer  to  again 
in  a  moment.  I  fear,  if  I  must  think  of  the 
city  as  thus  described,  I  should  get  tired  of  the 
place  after  a  little.  I  cannot  imagine  myself 
wantino-  to  walk  on  and  look  at  streets  of  o-old, 
a  lake  that  looked  like  glass,  the  same  kind  of 
trees  everywhere  you  turn.  The  only  art  that 
is  referred  to  is  music, —  no  ordinary  human 
occupations  are  assigned  to  anybody.  I  should 
long  sometimes  to  get  through  the  gates  and 
into  the  country,  if  there  was  a  country,  to  find 
a  change  of  scene. 

I  speak  of  this  simply  to  show  the  limitations 
of  the  faculty  of  anybody  who  attempts  to  de- 
scribe a  thing  like  perfect  bliss. 

And  here  note,  before  we  go  any  farther, — it 
is  a  good  deal  easier  to  describe  suffering  and 
make  it  interesting  than  it  is  to  describe  hap- 
piness and  make  it  interesting.  You  can  de- 
scribe a  whole  round  of  tortures,  and  each  one 
will  be  utterly  distinct  from  the  rest,  and  you 
feel  every  pang.     But  can   I   describe  twelve 


Heavens  28 


J 


kinds  of  enjoyment,  so  as  to  make  them  dis- 
tinct and  perfectly  clear  to  the  imagination,  so 
that  one  would  not  cret  a  little  tired  of  it  before 
we  were  through  ? 

Now,  I  do  not  know  what  sort  of  humiliat- 
ting  confession  I  may  be  making  ;  but  I  am 
going  to  say  that  I  have  read  Dante,  or  tried  to 
read  him,  several  times.  I  have  always  been 
intensely  interested  in  his  Inferno  ;  it  seems 
human  in  spite  of  its  horror  ;  it  seems  real.  I 
was  less  interested  in  the  Purgatory  ;  it  seemed 
less  real  to  me,  somehow,  less  human ;  and  I 
have  always  found  it  intensely  difficult  to  stay 
in  his  heaven  lono-  enouorh  to  orct  throuofh  with 
it.  It  may  be  all  my  fault ;  but  I  have  found 
it  too  tenuous,  too  intangible,  to  touch  me  as  a 
human  being,  to  come  within  range  of  human 
thoughts  and  human,  occupations. 

And  very  much  the  same  is  true  in  regard  to 
Milton.  Milton's  hell  is  intensely  interesting  ; 
and  Satan  is,  in  interest  and  power,  so  much 
beyond  any  of  the  other  characters,  that  some 
of  his  critics  have  said  he  was  evidently  his 
hero  ;  and  that  Milton  himself,  being  something 
of  a  rebel,  sympathised  with  this  arch,  gigantic 
rebel  of  the  universe,  at  least  on  the  rebel  side 
of  him.  He  makes  him  terribly  human.  But 
Adam,  the  angels, — there  never  seemed  to  me 


284  Heavens 

any  human  projections  about  them  that  I  could 
hang  any  interest  on. 

And  so  I  have  concluded  that  it  is  exceeding 
difficult  to  describe  happiness  in  such  a  way  as 
to  make  it  very  real.  You  know  there  is  a  say- 
ing that  "the  happy  woman  has  no  history." 
The  stream  of  happiness  flows  on  so  smoothly 
that  there  are  no  breaks,  no  ripples,  no  cata- 
racts to  record,  little  to  write  about.  Suppose 
you  describe  her  happiness  yesterday,  all  the 
experiences  she  went  through  and  that  she  en- 
joyed intensely  ;  the  very  breathing  of  the  air 
was  joy,  the  fragrance  of  the  flowers  was  joy, 
the  gleam  of  the  eastern  sky  as  the  sun  was 
coming  up  was  joy  ;  but  can  you  describe  it, 
can  you  make  it  real,  tangible,  to  people  ?  And, 
particularly,  if  the  next  ten  or  fifteen  days  are 
very  much  the  same,  can  you  describe  them  so 
as  to  make  them  different  from  the  rest,  so  as 
to  give  a  detailed  picture  of  happiness,  and 
make  it  mean  much  to  anyone  ? 

So  I  have  hunted  through  the  descriptions  of 
heaven  which  I  have  been  able  to  find,  from 
beginning  to  end  ;  and  I  find  that  up  to  the 
present  time  the  writers  have  not  succeeded  in 
making  them  interesting  to  me.  Take  the 
writer  of  the  old  hymn  —  I  thought  I  should 
be  able  to  recall    his  name,    but  I  have  not 


Heavens  285 

been    able    to    put     my     finger    on   it  —  who 


"  When  we  've  been  there  ten  thousand  years. 
Bright  shining  as  the  sun, 
We  've  no  less  days  to  sing  God's  praise 
Than  when  we  first  begun." 

Now,  can  yoii  imagine  yourself  happy,  sing- 
ing God's  praise  every  day  for  ten  thousand 
years  ?  Can  you  imagine  God  willing  to  put 
up  with  it  ?  Of  course,  it  is  all  figurative.  I 
am  simply  using  these  illustrations  to  show 
how  difificult  it  is,  except  in  general  terms,  to 
describe  the  heaven  that  even  we  desire. 

I  remember  very  well,  painfully  well,  when 
I  was  a  little  boy,  hearing  the  choir  singing 
sometimes — perhaps  for  the  last  hymn,  when  I 
had  been  so  tired  for  twenty  minutes  that  it 
seemed  almost  impossible  for  me  to  keep  still 
any  longer — the  old  hymn  that  closed  with 

"  Where  congregations  ne'er  break  up 
And  Sabbaths  have  no  end." 

Now,  I  suppose  that  must  have  been  express- 
ive of  a  state  of  mind  into  which  somebody 
worked  himself  when  he  wrote  that  hymn,  to 
make  it  mean  something  to  him  ;  but  is  it  any- 
thing that  makes  us  want  to  go  to  heaven  ? 

It  seems  to  me  that  there  must  be  a  reform 


286  Heavens 

in  our  thoughts  about  heaven  in  the  direction 
of  making  it  sweet  and  real  and  human.  There 
ought  to  be,  for  example,  what  ?  A  perfect 
memory.  Have  any  of  you  ever  done  or  said 
a  thing  which  you  would  like  to  forget  ?  I 
have  not.  In  saying  that,  I  make  no  claim  to 
goodness.  I  have  said  things,  I  have  done 
things,  that  I  have  cried  my  heart  out  over ; 
but  they  are  a  part  of  me,  and  I  do  not  want 
to  forget  them.  I  want  them,  so  that  I  can 
know  that  it  is  I.  I  want  them  as  a  back- 
ground for  other  things.  I  want  no  heaven, 
in  other  words,  that  does  not  carry  with  it  a 
memory  that  constitutes  a  personal  conscious- 
ness.     I  want  to  be  myself. 

People  write  to  me,  and  say  that  they  try  to 
be  content  with  the  thought  that  they  are 
p-oinp-,  somehow  or  other,  to  enter  into  the 
general  good  of  the  future,  but  do  not  expect 
a  continuance  of  their  personal  consciousness. 
I  am  perfectly  willing  that  what  is  left  of  me 
shall  Q-o  into  the  greneral  ofood,  if  that  is  the 
way  of  it ;  but,  if  I  am  not  consciously  to  be 
there,  why,  of  course,  it  will  mean  absolutely 
nothing  to  me.  I  have  no  personal  interest 
in  it. 

I  believe  the  heaven,  then,  that  will  satisfy 
us  must  have  this  personal  consciousness  of 


Heavens  '     287 

identity.  I  want  to  remember  everything,  from 
the  dawn  of  my  being  up  to  tKe  present  time, 
and  carry  it  with  me,  so  that  it  can  be  I  who 
am  doing,  seeing,  feeHng — am  a  part  of  all  new 
experiences  always. 

Then,  of  course,  that  carries  with  it  what 
has  been  discussed  no  end  of  times, —  the 
question  of  recognition  of  friends  in  heaven. 
Heaven  would  be  no  place  for  me  if  I  could 
not  look  forward  to  that.  I  would  not  turn 
my  hand  over  to  have  it  if  it  did  not  carry  that 
as  its  most  precious  hope.  If  I  am  not  going 
to  see  the  brothers,  father  and  mother, — all 
those  I  have  loved  so  tenderly  and  who  have 
made  up  the  dearest  and  sweetest  part  of  my 
existence, — if  I  am  not  gfoino-  to  see  them 
there,  then  it  would  be  exile,  and  not  home, 
and  where,  if  I  could  have  my  choice,  I  would 
not  care  to  go. 

Then  there  is  another  thing.  I  said  a  mo- 
ment aofo  it  must  be  made  more  human.  I 
have  studied  Swedenborg's  heavens.  I  have 
studied  Dante's,  Milton's,  the  heavens  of  all 
the  old  writers,  the  heavens  of  the  modern 
preachers,  so  far  as  they  have  gone  into  de- 
scriptions of  them ;  and  they  simply  have  not 
appealed  to  me.  Why  ?  Because  they  have 
not  been  human.     They  have  not   furnished 


288  Heavens 

scope  and  room  for  what  we  are  and  can  do 
when  at  our  best. 

And  it  is  curious,  and  it  is  strange,  and  more 
curious  and  more  strange  that  the  people  who 
hinder  the  cominor  of  a  Httle  more  Horht  do  not 
see  it,  and  do  not  see  that  they  are  doing  what 
has  been  done  ten  thousand  times  before, —  it 
is  curious,  I  say,  to  see  how  people  will  stand 
in  the  way  of  a  little  more  sensible  human 
thought  in  some  of  these  directions. 

When  Elizabeth  Stuart  Phelps  wrote  her 
"  Gates  Ajar,"  what  did  she  do  it  for — what  was 
the  main  point  of  the  book  ?  I  care  not 
whether  her  particular  ideas  were  true  or  not ; 
but  what  did  she  plead  for  ?  A  typical  illustra- 
tion will  show  you.  A  little  girl  learns  to  play 
the  piano.  She  has  never  had  one  ;  she  longs 
for  one  as  the  great,  crowning  achievement 
and  glory  of  her  life  ;  and  she  asks  Miss 
Phelps  whether  she  believes  that  she  will  have 
a  piano  in  heaven.  What  did  Miss  Phelps  say 
to  her  ?  She  tells  her  frankly  that  she  thinks 
she  will  ;  and  all  over  this  country,  and  all 
over  Europe,  there  rose  a  cry  of  protest. 
What  for  ?  Because  up  to  that  time  the  only 
instruments  that  had  been  introduced  into 
heaven,  apparently,  were  harps. 

Now  a  harp,  for  anything   I  can  see,  is  just 


Heavens  '     289 

as  material,  if  that  was  the  trouble,  as  a  piano. 
But  this  little  girl  did  not  want  a  harp,  she  did 
not  understand  a  harp,  she  did  not  know  how 
to  play  on  a  harp  ;  it  would  have  been  no 
heaven  to  her  to  give  her  a  harp.  And  Miss 
Phelps  keenly  saw,  whether  she  was  telling  her 
the  literal  truth  or  not,  that  she  was  telling  her 
the  divinest  an>l  deepest  truth  of  all  when  she 
told  her  that  the  supremest  longing  of  her  soul 
would  be  met  and  satisfied. 

But  every  step  of  religious  progress  has  had 
to  meet  this  sort  of  stupid,  thoughtless,  pure 
prejudice.  As  has  already  been  said,  a  piano 
is  not  a  whit  more  material  than  a  harp  ;  but  it 
was  all  right  to  talk  about  harps,  and  heresy 
to  say  anything  about  a  piano  !  Now,  this  is 
what  we  must  o-et  over.  Most  of  the  heavens 
of  the  past  are  furnished  as  occupation  with 
only  the  things  that  a  very  few  people  desire. 
You  see  in  the  pictures  of  them  harps  always, 
people  with  golden  crowns  standing  before  the 
throne,  taking  them  off  their  heads  and  fling- 
ing them  at  the  feet  of  Jesus  or  of  God,  and 
singing  and  chanting  His  glory.  And  you 
think,  from  these  statements  and  pictures,  and 
the  art  that  has  been  lavished  on  these  things 
in  every  direction,  that  this  is  about  all  there  is 
to  heaven. 


290  Heavens 

Now,  while  everybody,  I  suppose,  has  some 
small  capacity  for  learning  something  about 
music,  there  are  a  thousand  other  things  that 
they  care  for  a  great  deal  more.  Is  there  going 
to  be  nothing  for  anybody  but  the  musicians  to 
do  in  heaven  ?  What  would  George  Stephen- 
son do  in  heaven?  What  would  Michael  An- 
gelo  do  in  heaven  ?  What  will  the  great  mathe- 
maticians do  in  heaven  ?  What  will  the  great 
discoverers  do  in  heaven  ?  What  will  the  great 
philanthropists  do  in  heaven  ?  For,  according  to 
the  popular  idea  of  heaven,  all  field  for  philan- 
thropy is  done  away  with.  You  are  going  to 
be  glad  when  you  see  people  in  trouble,  instead 
of  being  sorry  for  them.  Consequently  there 
is  going  to  be  no  field  for  effort  to  get  them 
out  of  their  trouble.  That  is  the  teaching  of 
most  of  the  theologies. 

So  most  of  the  pictures  of  the  old-time  heav- 
ens do  not  satisfy  the  demand  for  the  broad- 
ening, deepening,  heightening  life  and  dream 
and  hope  of  the  human  race.  I  believe  that 
heaven  will  find  free  room  and  scope  for  all  that 
is  best  and  noblest  in  us,  and  that  not  a  man, 
not  a  woman,  who  has  contributed  to  the  sweet- 
ness, the  happiness,  the  beauty,  the  glory,  the 
health,  the  uplifting  of  human  life  in  this  world, 
but  will  find  ample  scope  and  room  for  a  thou- 


Heavens  291 

sand  times  orandcr  contribution  to  the  (jrowth 
and  development  of  the  universe  over  there. 

For,  finally,  the  idea  that  death  puts  an  end 
to  all  growth — the  idea  in  which  I  was  trained, 
that  you  are,  a  moment  after  death,  either  a 
devil  or  pure  angel,  that  that  is  the  end  of  it, — 
lives  no  more.  So  there  stretches  out  before 
us  an  illimitabt'e  career,  in  which  there  is  field 
for  all  that  one  can  dream  or  think  or  accom- 
plish. 

Our  discussion,  so  far,  leaves  us  only  on  the 
threshold  of  a  theme  which,  under  another 
form  and  name,  will  constitute  the  main  theme 
of  the  next  chapter. 


XIII 

THE  RESURRECTION  LIFE 

As  an  indication  of  the  changed  tone  of 
the  modern  world  in  deahng  with  the  great 
themes  of  future  good  and  ill,  I  wish  to  tell 
a  brief  story  of  our  loved  poet  Whittier,  and 
let  you  read  one  of  the  poems  which  makes 
that  story  so  significant. 

Whittier  was  born  an  orthodox  Quaker ; 
he  died  a  Quaker,  but  not  an  orthodox  one. 
He  was  full  at  the  last  of  the  freedom  of 
thought  and  life  which  has  made  this  slq-q  so 
different  from  the  preceding.  He  wrote  a 
poem  after  he  had  begun  to  be  less  orthodox, 
—  that  is,- in  the  olden  time, —  and  it  is  that 
poem  which  will  illustrate  the  change  which 
was  cominof  over  the  world.  The  title  of  it  is 
"  The  Two  Angels  "  : 

"God  called  the  nearest  angels  who  dwell  with  Hhn 
above  : 
The  tenderest  one  was  Pity,  the  dearest  one  was  Love. 
292 


The  Resurrection  Life  293 

"  '  Arise,'  He  said,  '  my  angels  !  a  wail  of  woe  and  sin 
Steals  through  the   gates  of    heaven,  and  saddens  all 
within. 

"'My  harps  take  up  the  mournful  strain  that  from  a 
lost  world  swells, 
The  smoke  of  torment  clouds  the  light  and  blights  the 
asphodels. 

"  '  Fly  downward'^to  that  underworld,  and  on   its  souls 
of  pain 
Let  Love  drop  smiles  like  sunshine,  and  Pity  tears 
like  rain  ! ' 

*'  Two  faces  bowed   before  the  Throne,  veiled  in  their 
golden  hair  ; 
Four   white  wings    lessened   swiftly    down   the    dark 
abyss  of  air. 

"  The  way  was  strange,  the  flight  was  long  ;  at  last  the 
angels  came 
Where  swung  the  lost  and  nether  world,  red-wrapped 
in  rayless  flame. 

"  There  Pity,  shuddering,  wept ;  but  Love,  with  faith  too 
strong  for  fear, 
Took  heart    from    God's  almightiness    and   smiled  a 
smile  of  cheer. 

"  And,  lo  !  that  tear  of  Pity  quenched  the  flame  whereon 
it  fell. 
And,    with   the   sunshine  of  that  smile,  hope  entered 
into  hell  ! 

"  Two  unveiled   faces  full  of  joy  looked  upward  to  the 
Throne. 


294  The  Resurrection  Life 

Four  white  wings  folded  at  the  feet  of  Him  who  sat 
thereon  ! 

"  And  deeper  than  the  sound  of  seas,  more  soft  than 
falling  flake, 
Amidst  the  hush  of  wing  and  song  the  Voice  Eternal 
spake  : 

"'Welcome,  my  angels  !  ye  have  brought  a  holier  joy 
to  heaven  ; 
Henceforth  its  sweetest  song  shall  be,  the  song  of  sin 
forgiven  ! '  " 

The  result  of  that  poem  was  an  acrimonious 
and  critical  attack  upon  Whittier  by  his  ortho- 
dox Quaker  friends.  They  said  he  was  losing 
the  faith.  And  here  is  the  point  you  need  to 
note :  Whittier's  reply  was,  in  my  opinion,  the 
grandest  religious  lyric  that  has  ever  been 
written  since  this  world  began, —  "  The  Eter- 
nal Goodness."  Read  it,  remembering  that  it 
is  a  reply  to  a  criticism  on  "  The  Two  Angels."  ' 

I  have  started  with  this  reference  to  Whit- 
tier's poem  as  a  general  introduction  to  the 
change  of  conception  that  Is  passing  over 
the  modern  world  in  our  way  of  looking  at 
the  possibility  and  prospect  of  another  life, — 
whether  that-life  is  to  be  good  for  us  or  whether 
there  is  to  be  a  great  deal  of  evil  connected 
with  it. 


The  Resurrection  Life  295 

This  chapter  is  to  deal  with  the  Resurrec- 
tion Life.  I  naturally  need  to  begin  by 
asking  what  we  mean  by  the  resurrection,  for 
the  word  to-day  generally  signifies  something 
very  different  from  what  was  at  first  meant  in 
the  early  Church.  As  I  have  had  occasion  to 
tell  my  readers  before,  the  people  at  the  time 
of  Jesus  believed  that  all  souls  went  down  to 
a  cavernous,  underground  world.  They  came 
to  believe  that  it  was  divided  into  two  parts, 
good  and  evil  ;  but  nobody  went  to  heaven,  in 
the  ordinary  meaning  of  those  words  to-day. 
All  went  down  to  this  underoround  world. 

And  the  question  of  the  resurrection  was 
that  of  their  comino;  back  from  the  under- 
world,  rising  again  after  going  down — that  was 
the  significance  of  the  problem  of  the  resur- 
rection. So  that  those  who  believed  in  the 
resurrection  of  Christ  were  not  necessarily 
those  that  believed  that  his  body  had  come 
out  of  the  tomb  of  Joseph.  They  were  those 
who  believed  that  the  Christ  was  still  alive, 
and  that  he  was  no  longer  a  prisoner  in  the 
underworld,  but  had  come  out  of  it,  con- 
quered it,  and  become  the  first-fruits  of  them 
that  had  slept.  This  is  what  the  resurrection 
essentially  meant.  As  to  whether  the  body 
was  coming  up,  that  was  another  matter. 


296  The  Resurrection  Life 

What  was  it  that  was  to  be  raised  ?  If 
they  were  coming  up  out  of  this  underworld, 
what  was  coming  ?  It  is  a  very  curious  thing 
to  me  that  people  have  been  fighting  for  the 
resurrection  of  the  body  for  hundreds  of 
years,  and  have  made  it  a  cardinal  doctrine 
in  the  Church.  I  was  written  to  by  a  clergy- 
man not  long  ago,  who  told  me  that  no  man 
had  a  right  to  be  a  minister  in  his  church 
unless  he  believed  in  this  doctrine.  I  am  as- 
tonished that  these  people  forget  that  Saint 
Paul  himself  denies  it.  He  says  it  is  not  that 
body  which  was  buried,  but  the  soul,  clothed 
as  God  pleases,  which  is  going  to  rise.  Flatly, 
in  so  many  words,  he  says  it. 

What  is  it  that  is  to  come  out  of  this 
underworld  ?  What  is  it  that  is  to  rise  again  ? 
I  am  speaking  as  if  I  held  the  doctrine  of  the 
early  time,  of  going  down  to  an  underworld  ; 
but  our  conception  of  the  other  life  has  under- 
gone a  tremendous  change.  We  no  longer 
believe  that  anyone  goes  down  into  an  under- 
world. We  believe  that  the  resurrection,  so 
far  as  there  is  anything  that  deserves  that 
name,  is  Immediately  after  the  fact  of  death. 
After  a  little  unconsciousness  or  sleep,  pro- 
lonored  five  minutes  in  some  cases, —  an  hour,  a 
week,  a  few  months,  possibly,  in  other  cases, — 


The  Resurrection  Life  297 

there  is  rousing  to  consciousruiss  in  the  other 
world.     That  is  what  we  beheve  in  to-day. 

And  that  raises  another  old-time  question 
as  to  whether  there  is  anything  in  the  nature 
of  things  or  any  evidence  anywhere  that 
should  lead  us  to  believe  in  another  doctrine 
which  has  plaj^pd  so  large  a  part  in  the  history 
of  the  Church  ;  that  is,  the  doctrine  of  the 
intermediate  state — the  intermediate  place. 
I  used  to  hear  the  doctrine  talked  over  as 
a  vital  question.  Edward  H.  Bickersteth,  a 
once  famous  poet  who  wrote  an  epic,  and 
once  thought  a  great  one,  the  title  of  it  being 
"  Yesterday,  To-day,  and  Forever,"  taught 
that  there  was  not  only  an  intermediate  state, 
but  an  intermediate  place,  lasting  from  the 
time  of  individual  death  until  the  general 
resurrection. 

I  remember  hearing  it  discussed,  when  I  was 
a  boy,  as  to  whether  people  went  right  straight 
to  hell  or  to  heaven  —  their  souls  —  while  their 
bodies  were  in  the  grave,  or  whether  they 
slept  in  the  grave  and  did  not  wake  up  until 
the  resurrection,  after  which  they  either  went 
to  hell  or  to  heaven,  whichever  place  they 
deserved.  It  was  a  vital  question  then  ;  it  is 
a  vital  question  in  many  parts  of  the  world  to- 
day.     Mr.  Spurgeon  teaches  very  definitely  his 


298  The  Resurrection  Life 

opinion  that  the  soul  goes  to  heaven  or  to 
hell,  whichever  it  has  deserved,  while  the  body 
stays  in  the  grave  until  the  resurrection  ;  but 
that  the  soul  is  not  as  happy  in  heaven  as  it  is 
going  to  be,  or  as  bad  off  in  hell  as  it  is  going 
to  be,  until  after  it  is  united  with  the  body. 
He  says  the  body  shared  the  sinful  pleasures 
of  those  who  lived  an  evil  life  or  the  suffer- 
ings and  persecutions  of  the  good,  and  so  it 
is  fair  that  the  body  should  share  with  the 
soul  its  reward  or  punishment. 

Perhaps  I  need  hardly  say  that  I  believe  we 
wake  into  consciousness  ;  it  is  not  going  down 
and  coming  up — it  is  simply  going  on  ;  and  we 
go  on  what  we  are.  Let  it  be  understood, 
however,  lest  I  should  seem  too  dogmatic  if 
I  appear  very  earnest,  that  I  am  not  writing 
as  if  I  had  authority.  I  am  only  stating  the 
results  of  the  study  of  a  good  many  years ; 
the  reader  must  take  it  for  what  it  is  worth, 
having  considered  the  amount  of  evidence  I 
may  be  able  to  bring. 

I  believe,  then,  that  we  go  on  just  what  we 
make  ourselves  by  our  lives  here.  That 
which  finds  itself  in  the  resurrection  life,  as  it 
is  popularly  called,  will  be  the  real,  the  essen- 
tial man,  —  not,  necessarily,  what  hundreds 
thought  of  him  ;  not,  necessarily,  what  he  was 


The  Resurrection  Life  299 

estimated  to  be  on  Wall  street ;  not,  tliank 
God,  what  his  bitter  enemies  thought  of  him  ; 
not  what  his  wife  and  children  thought  of  him, 
necessarily.  He  will  be  what  he  became 
while  here.  He  will  be  himself  who  will  wake 
up  in  the  clearer  light  of  that  other  life.  If 
you  ask  liberals  sometimes  whether  they  hold 
any  severe  doctrine,  I  ask  you  to  question 
with  yourselves  a  quiet  five  minutes  as  to 
whether  there  can  be  anything  worse, —  except 
perpetual  pain — ,  when  you  are  bad,  than  that 
you  be  stripped  and  be  seen  as  you  are.  This 
is  the  kind  of  life,  I  suppose,  that  we  go  into. 
But  there  are  one  or  two  subtle  questions 
more.  As  I  rouse  myself  in  that  other  life, 
am  I  in  a  place  or  a  state  ?  There  is  a  great 
deal  of  metaphysical  thought  at  the  present 
time  about  spiritual  states  being  everything. 
Of  course,  essentially,  that  of  which  heaven 
consists  is  a  state  ;  but  it  is  not  a  bit  truer 
there  than  it  is  here.  That  which  makes  )'ou 
happy  now  is  a  state  of  consciousness,  not 
the  particular  place  you  are  in.  Rich  men 
know  well  enough  that  being  in  a  finely  furn- 
ished house  does  not  insure  happiness,  that 
being  able  to  buy  anything  they  lay  their  eyes 
on  is  not  quite  all  that  they  care  for  in  this 
world.      And  poor  people  have  found  out  very 


300  The  Resurrection  Life 

frequently  that  Hving  in  narrow  quarters,  ill 
furnished,  with  no  great  amount  of  light  and 
air,  has  not  been  able  to  keep  out  heaven, 
because  they  carried  it  with  them  ;  and  wher- 
ever they  were,  that  was. 

Of  course,  the  essential  thing  over  there 
will  be  a  state,  and  not  a  place.  But  does 
that  mean  that  you  are  to  be  nowhere  in  par- 
ticular? A  word  about  this  matter  of  time 
and  space.  I  have  tried,  but,  I  confess  in 
some  humiliation,  I  have  tried  in  vain  to  find 
out  what  a  great  many  philosophers  are  talk- 
ing about  in  this  connection.  Even  Mr. 
Swedenborg  himself  will  tell  us  that  there  are 
no  such  things  as  time  or  space  in  the  spirit- 
world.  That  may  mean  something  to  some- 
body ;  but  it  means  nothing  to  me. 

For  example,  suppose  I  have  two  thoughts. 
Unless  you  are  more  brilliant  than  I  am,  as  I 
get  those  two  thoughts  clearly  outlined  and 
distinct  from  each  other,  one  of  them  must 
precede  the  other.  I  do  not  have  them  at 
the  identical  instant.  And  if  I  meet  a  friend 
over  there,  if  there  are  two  of  us,  I  do  not 
know  any  laws  of  physics — or  metaphysics, 
either — by  which  the  two  of  us  can  occupy 
identically  the  same  space.  So  it  seems  to 
me  a  waste  of  words — you  must  take  my  opin- 


The  Resurrection  Life  301 

ion  for  what  it  is  worth — to  be  discussing  thus 
about  time  and  space. 

But  have  we  bodies  ?  We  leave  these  bod- 
ies behind  us  ;  have  we  bodies  over  there  ?  I 
am  showing  you  my  Hmitations  ;  but  I  cannot 
think  of  an  individual  entity  or  consciousness 
of  personality  unembodied,  without  form,  that 
occupies  no  space.  A  thing  that  is  unem- 
bodied, a  thing  that  has  no  shape,  and  that 
occupies  no  space,  to  the  best  of  my  thinking, 
is  nothinq;.  So  I  believe  that  in  the  resur- 
rection  life  all  are  embodied  as  really  as  they 
are  now.  I  do  not  always  know  what  people 
are  talking  about  when  they  say,  "  Are  we 
really  to  have  bodies  over  there?"  If  they 
mean  as  substantially,  as  intensely,  as  now, 
I  believe  they  are  more  real.  What  we  mean 
by  the  ether,  what  we  mean  by  electricity,  by 
no  end  of  invisible  and  intangible  forces,  is 
something  much  more  intensely  real,  if  there 
are  degrees  of  reality,  than  my  hand  or  the 
clothes  I  wear. 

I  am  inclined  to  the  view  that  we  are  to 
wear  what  we  may  call  a  psychical  body,  imi- 
tating Paul  in  that.  Within  us  now  there  may 
be  another  body  that  grows  with  our  growth, — 
that  is  the  clothing  of  our  invisible  self, — which 
leaves  this  body  when  it  gets  through  with  it, 


302  The  Resurrection  Life 

which  process  is  what  we  call  death.  This 
psychical  body  goes  out  more  intensely  real 
than  the  one  it  has  got  through  with.  This  is 
the  kind  of  body  with  which  we  appear  in  the 
resurrection  life. 

I  think  we  are  to  have  some  sort  of  cloth- 
ing, some  kind  of  houses,  some  sort  of  envi- 
ronment— physical  environment.  There  might 
be,  fifteen  miles  away  from  us,  right  here  in 
space,  the  most  magnificent  world  in  existence, 
grander  and  finer  than  this,  and  peopled  with 
the  happiest  creatures  that  live  in  all  the  uni- 
verse, and  we  know  nothinof  whatever  of  its 
existence  through  the  agency  of  our  present 
senses. 

I  do  not  know  but  we  may  be  put  into  a 
world  where  what  we  mean  now  by  clothing 
and  houses  and  ordinary  space  surroundings 
may  be  uncalled  for;  but  at  present  I  do  not 
understand  what  it  means,  and  I  must  think 
accordinor  to  what  seems  real  to  me.  I  believe 
there  is  at  .least  something  as  good  as  these 
things,  and,  if  we  cannot  know  just  what 
they  are,  that  we  have  a  right  to  comfort  our- 
selves by  thinking  of  them  under  these  terms. 

Now  is  there  a  world  like  this — one  of  moun- 
tains, trees  and  rivers  ?  I  incline  to  think  so  ; 
I   do  not  know.     That  seems  as  reasonable 


The  RcsuiTcction  Life  303 

to  me  and  more  natural  than  anything  else 
I  can  conceive ;  but  I  believe  that,  whatever 
shall  be  true  in  that  direction,  when  we  wake 
up,  it  will  be  with  a  cry  of  joy, — not  that  we 
are  disappointed,  but  that  it  is  something  better 
even  than  we  were  able  to  anticipate. 

Is  that  life  stationary  or  progressive  ?  Here 
we  come  to  ^ome  deeper  questions.  Is  that 
life  stationary  or  progressive  ?  Dante — and 
this  is  a  tradition  in  the  Church,  not  only  the 
Catholic,  but  the  Anglican  as  well,  and  in 
some  of  the  Protestant — teaches  us  that  the 
Beatific  Vision  is  the  acme  of  all  conceivable 
bliss,  to  which  nothing  can  be  added,  and, 
when  we  have  reached  that,  we  arc  throuo^h, — 
or,  rather,  in  the  contemplation  of  this  beatific 
vision  we  shall  never  get  through  or  get 
enouo^h  of  it  to  be  satisfied.  But  Dante  tells 
us  that  he  cannot  describe  it ;  which  is  evident, 
because  nobody  has  ever  been  able  to  tell 
what  he  meant  by  it. 

This  idea  does  not  satisfy  me.  I  am  Inclined 
to  think  that.  Instead  of  reaching  at  once  a 
beatific  vision  which  Is  to  fill  the  soul  through 
all  eternity,  we  enter  upon  a  life  of  infinite 
progression.  And  here  comes  a  question  which 
I  can  only  touch  upon.  If  we  are  to  progress 
in    the   other  world.    Is   It  necessary   that   we 


304  The  Resurrection  Life 

should  be  reincarnated  over  and  over  again, 
and  come  back  here  and  go  through  many 
earthly  experiences  ?  There  are  a  great  many 
wise  people  telling  us  at  the  present  time 
that  it  is  necessary  for  us  to  live  every  conceiv- 
able kind  of  life  here,  and  go  through  every 
conceivable  experience,  from  the  prince  to  the 
pauper,  from  the  saint  to  the  wildest  and  worst 
sinner.  I  will  stop  long  enough  simply  to  say 
that  I  do  not  see  why.  When  somebody  gives 
me  a  reason  for  that  opinion,  I  will  try  to  un- 
derstand it. 

There  is  another  thing  that  the  believers  in 
reincarnation  are  accustomed  to  say  to  us, — that 
we  must  have  it  to  explain  the  injustice  of  the 
world.  To  me  it  does  not  explain  the  injust- 
ice of  the  world  ;  it  only  pushes  it  back  out  of 
sight.  If  it  was  sin  in  the  life  before  this  one 
which  led  to  the  suffering  I  am  going  through 
in  this,  what  led  to  the  suffering  I  went  through 
in  the  last  ?  They  tell  us  it  was  the  sin  in  the 
one  that  preceded  that,  and  so  on  back  ;  you 
simply  keep  on  pushing  it  back  through  count- 
less millions  of  years,  and  never  get  anywhere. 
They  say  all  the  evils  are  to  be  explained  by 
what  happened  in  the  life  preceding  ;  but,  if 
you  keep  pushing  back  life  after  life,  you  have 
got  to  get  to  the  end  of  it  sometime,  and  then 


The  Resurrection  Life      '     305 

you  have  the  same  problem  facing  you  as 
you  have  now.  Either  we  were  ahvays  just 
ahke,  if  we  have  been  Hving  forever,  or  else  we 
were  always  different,  or  else  we  were  made 
alike  in  the  first  place,  and  given  different  en- 
vironments which  caused  the  differences  in  us. 
In  either  case,  God  is  ultimately  responsible 
for  all  the  divJtsities  and  differences  of  char- 
acter; so  that  this  does  not  explain  things  any 
more  than  if  you  take  a  puzzle  which  I  do  not 
understand  and  hide  it  behind  a  curtain.  When 
I  go  behind  the  curtain  it  is  still  there,  and  I 
do  not  understand  it  any  better,  and  a  million 
curtains  would  make  no  difference.  It  would 
be  the  same  thing  when  you  came  to  the  last 
one :  it  would  be  the  same  old  puzzle.  If 
it  were  proved  to  me  to  be  true,  of  course 
no  objection  would  make  it  untrue  ;  but  still 
it  would  not  be  desirable  to  me. 

Suppose  the  person  that  I  love  best  in  all  the 
world  should  die,  and  I  live  on  for  twenty-five 
years.  By  the  time  I  got  there  that  person  m  ight 
be  reincarnated.  Instead  of  looking  forward 
to  meet  her,  I  should  have  to  be  waiting  for  her. 
By  the  time  she  got  back  I  might  be  reincar- 
nated. For  anything  I  can  see,  we  might  be 
missing  each  other  in  this  way  for  several  mil- 
lions of  years.     Il  seems  to  me  a  hopeless  kind 


3o6  The  Resurrection  Life 

of  doctrine  any  way  you  take  it ;  and  the  curi- 
ous fact  is — and  this,  I  confess,  does  puzzle  me 
beyond  expression— that  all  the  Hindus,  all  the 
Buddhists,  twice  over  as  many  people  as  there 
are  Christians  on  the  face  of  the  earth,  are  en- 
gaged with  their  utmost  power — all  their  philos- 
ophies, all  their  religions,  exist  to  the  one  end — 
in  trying  to  get  rid  of  being  reincarnated  ;  while 
here  we  are  picking  it  up  as  though  it  were  a 
new  find,  and  something  very  delightful.  The 
one  object  of  all  their  religions  is  to  escape  it. 
Before  we  take  it  up  too  readily,  I  think  it 
would  be  worth  while  to  find  out  why  they  are 
working  so  hard  to  get  rid  of  it. 

So  this  does  not  give  me  any  hope  as  I  look 
forward  to  the  other  life. 

But  now  comes  another  question  that  people 
are  perpetually  asking.  They  say,  after  the 
belief  is  expressed  that  there  is  not  going  to  be 
any  permanent  hell,  "  Well,  how  are  the  good 
and  evil  to  be  mixed  up  together,  and  there  be 
any  heaveri  at  all?"  Might  one  not  ask  just 
as  well,  How  can  there  be  any  happiness  in  New 
York  with  the  good  and  evil  mixed  up  in  it  ? 
We  do  not  associate  with  evil  here  unless  we 
wish  to  :  we  are  not  compelled  to  associate 
with  bad  people.  People  go  their  own  way 
according  to  their  own  wishes  and  desires,  and 


The  Resurrection  Life  307 

so  it  seems  to  me  they  woukl,if  they  were  not 
fenced  apart  by  themselves  in  the  resurrection 
life. 

There  is  another  point,  one  of  the  most  im- 
portant of  all  :  If  we  were  to  be  shut  off  in 
heaven  by  ourselves,  never  to  come  in  contact 
with  suffering  ^r  evil  of  any  kind,  or  if,  accord- 
ing to  the  teachings  of  Edwards  and  Hopkins 
and  many  of  the  modern  authorities  in  England 
and  America,  we  are  to  be  so  changed  that 
looking  down  over  the  battlements  of  heaven 
and  seeing  the  damned  in  hell  would  only  add 
to  our  joy,  why,  then  there  is  going  to  be  quite 
a  serious  change  in  our  nature.  Pity  and  love 
and  sympathy  and  the  impulse  to  help,  the  very 
motive  force  that  made  Christ  what  he  was, 
— that  w^hich,  we  are  told,  is  the  divinest  In  the 
very  heart  of  God, — all  that  is  going  to  be 
blotted  out.  We  are  going  to  be  different  kinds 
of  creatures  from  what  has  been  supposed. 

If  there  is  to  be  progress  and  a  full  life  led 
on  the  part  of  those  who  go  into  the  other 
condition  of  existence,  then  there  must  be  op- 
portunity for  us  to  come  into  contact  with  each 
other.  There  must  be  room  for  pity,  for  sym- 
pathy, and  help  ;  and  that  means  that  there 
must  be  hope,  however  far  away,  for  the  low- 
est and  the  poorest  and  the  meanest  of  all. 


3o8  The  Resurrection  Life 

Unless  there  is  hope  in  that  other  world,  then 
the  finest  and  grandest  things  in  us  are  to 
atrophy  and  die  out  after  a  while,  and  we  are 
to  become  the  very  concentration  of  selfishness 
and  self-indulgence,  though  it  be  in  nectar 
and  the  sweetest  things  the  poets  have  sung 
about.  There  must  be  field  there  for  all  that 
makes  us  men  ;  and  it  is  these  things  that 
have  more  to  do  in  making  us  men  than  any- 
thing else  that  we  can  conceive. 

There  is  one  other  problem,  you  will  notice, 
among  the  many  that  are  thrust  upon  us  by 
people  who  come  wishing  to  know  how  this  or 
that  or  another  thing  is  to  be  regarded  rationally 
in  connection  with  the  resurrection  life.  This 
is  the  question  of  the  possible  disentangle- 
ment of  human  relationships  here  in  this  world. 
Everybody  knows  that  there  are  men,  without 
any  fault  of  theirs,  so  tied  by  law  and  custom 
and  honor  to  the  places  and  associations  where 
they  are  that  they  never  have  a  sense  of  rest 
and  peace  and  joy  day  or  night  their  whole 
lives  long.  We  know  perfectly  well  that  there 
are  women  of  whom  a  similar  thing  is  true. 
There  are  children  who  never  have  a  chance, 
as  they  say.  -There  are  people  bound  together 
here  by  all  sorts  of  external  and  conventional 
bonds. 


The  Resurrection  Life  309 

Now  I  do  not  know  whether  I  sliall  sliock 
anyone  by  the  opinion  I  hold.'  Unfortunately, 
perhaps,  for  me,  I  have  never  asked  the  quest- 
ion, before  saying-  a  thing,  as  to  whether  any- 
body is  going  to  be  troubled  by  it  or  not,  if  it 
seemed  true  and  needed  to  be  said.  Do  we 
not  know  that  there  are  in  this  city  of  New 
York  and  in^any  place  in  the  world  many 
cases  of  people  who  are  bound  together  in 
this  life  by  bonds  purely  and  only  superficial, 
that  are  matters  of  convention,  that  are  mat- 
ters of  law,  perhaps,  who,  if  they  were  freed, 
would  fly  apart  to  the  world's  ends  ?  There 
were  two  people,  once  friends.  One  of  them 
lived  here  in  the  United  States,  and  the  other 
lived  on  the  Eastern  Continent  for  a  great 
many  years  ;  and  someone  who  did  not  know 
them  asked  why  they  lived  so  far  apart ;  and  the 
answer  was  that  the  world  was  not  bisf  enougrh 
so  that  they  could  get  any  farther  apart. 

This  hints  an  instinct  that  many  would  fol- 
low if  they  were  free  ;  and  in  no  end  of  times 
the  desire  to  be  free  is  no  crime  and  no  wrong. 
It  is  simply  a  desire  to  repair  a  blunder  that 
somebody  has  made,  perhaps  not  themselves. 
There  are  daughters  married  by  their  fathers 
and  mothers  for  the  sake  of  extending  the 
power   of   the   family.      There    are    husbands 


3IO  The  Resurrection  Life 

induced  to  marry  this  one  or  that  for  the  sake  of 
binding  together  two  estates  or  reaching  a  cer- 
tain social  position.  Do  bonds  Uke  these  last 
in  the  other  world  ?     I  trust  not. 

Let  us  hope  that  things  will  readjust  them- 
selves there  until  the  bonds  that  bind  people 
together  are  of  the  soul— are  real,  not  shams. 
Let  us  trust  it  is  to  be  a  world  of  justice  and 
of  reality. 

Will  there  be  perfect  happiness,  perfect 
bliss,  in  that  other  world  ?  Perhaps  I  shall 
shock  someone  again,  as  I  do  not  expect  it  at 
all  in  my  own  case.  This  old  idea  that  the 
minute  you  died  you  were  either  going  to  hell, 
to  be  as  miserable  as  possible  and  continue 
to  exist,  or  going  to  heaven,  to  be  as  happy 
as  you  could  be  and  continue  to  exist,  both 
seem  to  me  utterly  absurd.  I  expect  to  go 
into  the  other  world  what  I  am  now.  Sup- 
pose I  should  die  now,  in  five  minutes.  I  do 
not  believe  there  is  anything  in  the  fact  of 
dying  that  would  make  me  a  different  man 
from  what  I  am.  I  expect  to  carry  over  into 
that  world  the  accumulations  and  experiences, 
of  my  lifetime. 

There  are  thousands  of  us  who  need  to  take 
sound  and  careful  heed  to  the  fact  that  we  are 
training  ourselves   in   a  hundred   things  that 


The  Resurrection  Life  3 1 1 

will  be  of  no  avail  when  we  gx^t  there,  and  we 
are  ne^jlectinor  the  culture  and  trainino-  of  those 
things  that  may  be  most  important  when  in 
that  day  ;  and  those  things  alone  will  mean 
misery  or  happiness  without  any  regard  to  an 
outside  inflicter  or  jailer  who  is  glad  to  have 
it  so.      It  is  in^the  nature  of  things. 

I  do  not  expect  to  be  perfectly  happy.  If  I 
find  a  friend  over  there  who  has  not  outofrown 
his  meanness  and  selfishness  and  a  thousand 
bad  traits  which  he  cultivated  here,  and  is  in 
the  dark,  struggling  to  get  rid  of  himself,  I 
should  be  a  brute  to  be  perfectly  happy 
and  not  turn  to  him  in  sympathy  and  help 
him  out  of  it  if  I  could.  I  think  I  should 
not  worry  over  the  question  of  being  se- 
renely blessed  so  long  as  I  find  people  of  that 
kind  to  be  helped.  It  seems  to  me  that  this 
expecting  that  we  are  going  to  have  per- 
fect bliss  over  there  is  the  concentrated  es- 
sence of  selfishness.  I  do  not  know  how  it  is 
any  worse  to  want  to  be  happy  here  than  to 
want  to  be  happy  and  nothing  else  in  heaven. 

I  want  to  be  free  from  pain  just  this  minute. 
I  do  not  know  that  there  is  any  evil  in  it.  I 
do  not  want  to  suffer  any  unnecessary  pain  in 
heaven.  I  do  not  think  there  is  any  evil  in 
that,  either.      But  if  there  is  someone  I  can 


312  The  Resurrection  Life 

help,  and  if  seeing  his  struggles  and  difficulties 
makes  me  sad  for  the  time,  I  will  count  that 
sadness  a  fairer  and  whiter  crown  than  any 
that  has  been  painted  in  the  Revelation  of 
Saint  John  the  Divine. 

Let  us  trust  that  we  shall  be  growing  in  that 
land.  I  hope  there  will  be  the  sense  of 
strueele  for  us.  I  do  not  know  what  others 
can  imagine  ;  but  I  cannot  imagine  that  life  is 
going  to  mean  anything  where  there  is  no 
effort  and  where  there  is  no  sense  of  conquer- 
ing, of  victory  after  a  struggle.  And  if  there  is 
effort  there  must  be  a  little  question  as  to 
success,  or  the  effort  would  be  a  sham. 

Oh,  let  us  think  these  things  through,  and 
let  our  thouofhts  be  natural  and  human.  Let 
us  not  fancy  that  we  must  make  heaven  some- 
thing utterly  unnatural  in  order  to  make  it 
good  and  divine  ! 

Why  should  there  not  be  a  good  many 
sources  of  disquiet  and  discomfort  for  a  while 
over  there  ?  But  if  life  is  something  grand, 
and  there  is  hope  for  everybody,  and  you 
know  that,  no  matter  how  low  a  man  may  be, 
there  is  an  angel  in  him,  and  you  can  help  get 
him  out,  if  there  is  something  grand  to  study, 
—  then  there  may  be  happiness  unspeakably 
finer  and   nobler  than   that  senseless  and  in- 


The  Resurrection  Life 


j'o 


sipid  thing  that  has  been  pc-vintctl  so  often  of 
someone  sitting  on  a  cloud  and  doing  nothing 
except  play  a  harp  or  hear  someone  else  play. 

There  must  be  wide  open  field  for  the  oper- 
ation and  development  of  all  that  we  are. 
The  astronomer  shall  still  have  heavens  to 
study.  He  T*.'ho  is  overwhelmed,  as  I  have 
always  been,  by  the  infinitely  little,  shall  have 
an  opportunity  to  look  into  the  secrets  of  the 
universe.  Why  may  not  the  poet  write 
grander  epics  and  dramas  and  lyrics  than  he 
ever  wrote  here ;  why  may  not  the  histor- 
ian have  grander  themes  to  engage  his  pen  ; 
why  may  not  the  orater  have  audiences  still  to 
listen  and  applaud  ;  why  may  not  the  painter 
and  the  sculptor  be  able  to  outline  and  shape 
the  images  of  beauty  which  they  see  in  the  out- 
side world  or  that  they  dream  in  the  innerworld 
of  their  thouo^ht  ? 

These,  it  seems  to  me,  are  some  of  the 
things  that  open  to  us.  Let  us  dare  to  believe 
that  the  occupations  over  there  shall  be  just  as 
natural  and  human  as  they  are  here  ;  and  we 
shall  have  gotten  over  the  absurdity  of  sup- 
posing that  studying  God's  truth  in  the  uni- 
verse is  secular,  and  studying  what  the  same 
God  has  done  in  some  other  department  that  we 
are  accustomed  to  fence  off  and  call  "  church 


SH  The  Resurrection  Life 

life  "  is  sacred.  All  study  of  God  is  sacred. 
We  shall  learn  that  by  and  by,  and  rejoice  in 
the  fact. 

A  letter  recently  came  to  me,  a  few  lines  of 
which  I  wish  you  to  share  with  me.  It  is  the 
dream  of  a  friend  as  to  what  he  hopes  to  find 
in  the  other  country  : 

"  I  hope  to  find  a  quiet  place  in  the  rural  districts  of 
the  Hereafter — one  of  these  days.  I  want  a  river,  not 
too  big,  —  a  brook,  —  some  woods,  grand  hills,  a  garden 
where  I  can  raise  the  stuff  to  make  ambrosia,  and  fruits 
from  which  to  distil  nectar,  and  —  several  other  things. 
I  want  to  have  father  and  mother  and  Wilbur  and  Wesley 
and  John  and  all  the  rest  within  easy  calling  distance  ; 
and  some  plain,  useful  work  to  do." 

That  is  one  of  the  most  rational  dreams  and 
hopes  of  a  future  life  that  I  have  ever  had  the 
pleasure  to  read  ;  for  it  hints  the  divinest  thing 
after  all, — that  what  we  want  is  what  we  waked 
up  in  when  we  came  into  this  world.  We 
want  home  :•  no  matter  what  we  study,  we  want 
home ;  no  matter  how  far  we  travel,  we  want 
home ;  no  matter  how  many  we  go  out  to 
help,  to  teach,  to  inspire,  to  lift  up,  we  want  a 
home  to  which  to  go  back. 

When  we  think  of  heaven,  is  it  not  home 
that  we  are  thinking  of  more  than  anything 
else?      My  friend    near   me   this    morning  is 


The  Resurrection  Life  315 

thinking  of  the  wife  tliat  came  to  this  country 
with  him,  and  fought  it  out  with  him, — a  help- 
mate to  the  last.  And  no  other  thousand 
beautiful  women  could  make  any  heaven  for 
him  if  she  were  not  there.  And  he  wants  the 
daughter  whose  early  beauty  went  out  of  his 
life  and  left  it  so  desolate  ;  he  wants  the  old 
father  and  mother  ;  and  he  would  look  for 
many  a  good  old  neighbour. 

I  want,  if  I  could  have  my  way,  instead  of 
that  which  my  friend  has  written  and  I  have 
quoted,  a  great  city.  I  love  the  country  for  a 
while.  I  like  to  go  to  it  and  look  at  it.  But 
the  city  has  my  heart.  I  would  rather 
live  in  the  city  the  whole  year  round  than  to 
live  in  the  country  the  whole  year  round,  if  I 
could  only  have  one  choice.  I  want  the 
crowds — the  lift,  the  thrill  of  life,  the  side- 
walks, streets, — all  that  make  up  its  rush  and 
its  roar.  I  would  like  a  city  with  country  near 
and  accessible.  I  should  want  the  country  near 
enough,  so  that  I  could  go  and  see  my  friends 
who  will  live  in  the  country.  I  should  want 
the  heart-home,  the  one  I  love  most,  close  by. 
I  want  that,  and,  for  a  while, — rest. 

I  have  heard  people  talk  of  heaven  as  though 
they  were  going  to  rest  forever.  Would  n't 
that  come  to  be  the  most  tiresome  thing  of  all 


3i6  The  Resurrection  Life 

after  a  while  ?  Why  should  we  not  think  of 
it  as  natural  enough,  so  that  there  might  be 
turning  off  from  one  particular  thing  to  an- 
other, as  meeting  the  demands  of  the  heart  ? 
Why  should  we  not  think  of  it,  finally,  as  a 
human,  active  life,  and  a  life  that  can  go  on 
forever  ?  For — did  you  never  think  of  it  ? — it  is 
because  God  is  infinite,  and  because  there  are 
these  ten  thousands  of  questions  we  cannot 
answer  about  it, — it  is  because  of  this  mystery 
that  enshrouds  everything  that  we  can  have  a 
rational  dream  of  an  eternal  life. 

The  people  who  are  not  disposed  to  trust. 
in  God  because  they  cannot  see  the  meaning 
of  everything  each  minute  want  to  read  their 
own  death-warrants.  It  is  because  of  the 
eternal  mystery  that  we  can  still  advance  and 
have  something  eternally  before  us  to  seek  and 
strive  after.  It  is  this  eternal  activity,  with 
home  in  the  background,  that  makes  the 
essence  of  our  dream  of  the  resurrection  life. 


APPENDIX 
SOME  ancie;^t  and  modern  things  said 

ABOUT  HELL* 

A  HINDU  poet  says,  "  The  ungrateful  shall  re- 
main   in    hell    as    long    as    the    sun    hangs   in 
heaven." 

Hindu  and  Persian  sacred  books : 

"  Here  worlds  of  nauseating  disgusts,  of  loathsome 
agonies,  of  intolerable  terrors,  pass  before  us.  Some 
are  hung  up  by  their  tongues  or  by  their  eyes,  and 
slowly  devoured  by  fiery  vermin  ;  some  scourged 
with  whips  of  serpents  whose  poisonous  fangsl  acer- 
ate  their  flesh  at  every  blow ;  some  forced  to  swal- 
low bowls  of  gore,  hair,  and  corruption,  freshly  filled 
as  fast  as  drained  ;  some  packed  immovably  in  red- 
hot  iron  chests,  and  laid  in  raging  furnaces  for  un- 
utterable millions  of  ages." 

The  Parsee  priest  describes  a  woman  in  hell 
"  beaten  with  stone  clubs  by  two  demons  twelve 
miles  in  size,  and  compelled  to  continue  eating  a 
basin  of  putridity  because  once  some  of  her  hair,  as 
she  combed  it,  fell  into  the  sacred  fire.". 

The  Brahmanic   priest  tells  of   a   man  who,  for 

*  See  Chapter  xi. 
317 


3i8  Appendix 

"  neglecting  to  meditate  on  the  mystic  monosyllable 
'  Om '  before  praying,  was  thrown  down  in  hell  on 
an  iron  floor  and  cleaved  with  an  axe,  then  stirred 
in  a  cauldron  of  molten  lead  till  covered  all  over 
with  the  sweated  foam  of  torture,  like  a  grain  of  rice 
in  an  oven,  and  then  fastened,  with  head  down- 
wards and  feet  upwards,  to  a  chariot  of  fire,  and 
urged  onward  with  a  red-hot  goad." 

A  Talmudic  writer  says  : 

*'  There  are  in  hell  seven  abodes,  in  each  abode 
seven  thousand  caverns,  in  each  cavern  seven  thou- 
sand clefts,  in  each  cleft  seven  thousand  scorpions. 
Each  scorpion  has  seven  limbs,  and  on  each  limb 
are  seven  thousand  barrels  of  gall.  There  are  also 
in  hell  seven  rivers  of  rankest  poison,  so  deadly  that, 
if  one  touches  it,  he  bursts." 

Tertullian  : 

"  At  that  greatest  of  all  spectacles,  the  last  and 
eternal  judgment,"  he  says,  "  how  shall  I  admire, 
how  laugh,  how  rejoice,  how  exult,  when  I  behold 
so  many  proud  monarchs  groaning  in  the  lowest 
abyss  of  darkness  ;  so  many  magistrates  liquefying 
in  fiercer  flames  than  they  ever  kindled  against  the 
Christians ;  so  many  sage  philosophers  blushing  in 
red-hot  fires,  with  their  deluded  pupils  ;  so  many 
tragedians  more  tuneful  in  the  expression  of  their 
own  sufferings ;  so  many  dancers  tripping  more 
nimbly  from  anguish  than  ever  before  from  ap- 
plause !  " 

Burnet  has  preserved  the  plea  of  bloody  Mary :  — 


Appendix  319 

"As  the  souls  of  heretics  are  hereafter  to  be 
eternally  burning  in  hell,  there  ctin  be  nothing  more 
proper  than  for  me  to  imitate  the  divine  vengeance 
by  burning  them  on  earth." 

Jeremy  Taylor  says : 

"  We  are  amazed  at  the  inhumanity  of  Phalaris, 
who  roasted  men  in  his  brazen  bull:  this  was  joy  in 
respect  of  that^re  of  hell  which  penetrates  the  very 
entrails  without  consuming  them."  "  Husbands 
shall  see  their  wives,  parents  shall  see  their  children, 
tormented  before  their  eyes."  "  The  bodies  of  the 
damned  shall  be  crowded  together  in  hell  like  grapes 
in  a  wine-press,  which  press  one  another  till  they 
burst."  "  Every  distinct  sense  and  organ  shall  be 
assailed  with  its  own  appropriate  and  most  exquisite 
sufferings." 

Jonathan  Edwards: 

"  The  world  will  probably  be  converted  into  a 
great  lake  or  liquid  globe  of  fire, — a  vast  ocean  of 
fire,  in  which  the  wicked  shall  be  overwhelmed, 
which  will  always  be  in  tempest,  in  which  they  shall 
be  tossed  to  and  fro,  having  no  rest  day  or  night, 
vast  waves  or  billows  of  fire  continually  rolling  over 
their  heads,  of  which  they  shall  forever  be  full  of 
a  quick  sense  within  and  without.  Their  heads, 
their  eyes,  their  tongues,  their  hands,  their  feet, 
their  loins,  and  their  vitals  shall  forever  be  full  of  a 
glowing,  melting  fire,  fierce  enough  to  melt  the  very 
rocks  and  elements ;  and  also  they  shall  eternally  be 
full  of  the  most  quick  and  lively  sense  to  feel  the 


320  Appendix 

torments,  not  for  one  minute,  nor  for  one  day,  nor 
for  one  age,  nor  for  two  ages,  nor  for  a  hundred 
years,  nor  for  ten  thousands  of  milHons  of  ages,  one 
after  another,  but  forever  and  ever,  without  any  end 
at  all,  and  never,  never  be  delivered." 

Joseph  Trapp,  an  English  clergyman  : 
"  Doomed  to  live  death,  and  never  to  expire. 
In  floods  and  whirlwinds  of  tempestuous  fire 
The  damn'd  shall  groan, — fire  of  all  kinds  and  forms, 
In  rain  and  hail,  in  hurricanes  and  storms. 
Liquid  and  solid,  livid,  red  and  pale, 
A  flaming  mountain  here,  and  there  a  flaming  vale. 
The  liquid  fire  makes  seas  ;  the  solid,  shores. 
Arch'd  o'er  with  flames,  the  horrid  concave  roars. 
In  bubbling  eddies  rolls  the  fiery  tide. 
And  sulphurous  surges  on  each  other  ride. 
The  hollow  winding  vaults,  and  dens,  and  caves 
Bellow  like  furnaces  with  flaming  waves. 
Pillars  of  flame  in  spiral  volumes  rise. 
Like  fiery  snakes,  and  lick  the  infernal  skies. 
Sulphur,  the  eternal  fuel,  unconsumed, 
Vomits  rebounding  smoke,  thick,  unillumed." 

The  Bishop  of  Toronto  : 

"  Every  child  of  humanity,  except  the  Virgin 
Mary,  is  froni  the  moment  of  conception  a  child  of 
wrath,  hated  by  the  blessed  Trinity,  belonging  to 
Satan,  and  doomed  to  hell." 

In  Wigglesworth's  "  Day  of  Doom "  are  these 
verses  addressed  to  infants: 

"  You  sinners  are,  and  such  a  share 
As  sinners  may  expect. 


Appendix  321 

Such  you  sliall  liave  ;   ft)r  I  do  save 

None  but  my  own  elecf. 
Yet,  to  compare  your  sin  with  their 

Who  lived  a  longer  time, 
I  do  confess  yours  is  much  less, 

Though  every  sin's  a  crime. 

"  'A  crime  it  is,  therefore  in  bliss 

Yo\i,may  not  hope  to  dwell ; 
But  unto  you  I  shall  allow 

The  easiest  room  in  hell.' 
The  glorious  King  thus  answering. 

They  cease  and  plead  no  longer. 
Their  consciences  must  needs  confess 

His  reasons  are  the  stronger." 

The  New  School  Presbyterians,  in  the  so-called 
Auburn  Declaration,  adopted  the  following  article  : 

"While  repentance  for  sin  and  faith  in  Christ  are 
indispensable  to  salvation,  all  who  are  saved  arc  in- 
debted, from  first  to  last,  to  the  grace  and  Spirit  of 
God.  And  the  reason  that  God  does  not  save  all  is 
not  that  He  wants  the potccr  to  do  it,  but  that  in  His 
wisdom  He  does  not  seejil  to  exert  tJiat pozver  furtJur 
than  He  actually  does." 

Hopkins : 

"The  smoke  of  their  torment  shall  ascend  up  in 
the  sight  of  the  blessed  forever  and  ever,  and  serve 
as  a  most  clear  glass  always  before  their  eyes,  to  give 
them  a  bright  and  most  affecting  view.  This  display 
of  the  divine  character  will  be  most  entertaining  to 
all  who  love  God,  will  give  them  the  highest  and 


322  Appendix 

most  ineffable  pleasure.  Should  the  fire  of  this 
eternal  punishment  cease,  it  would  in  a  great  meas- 
ure obscure  the  light  of  heaven,  and  put  an  end  to 
a  great  part  of  the  happiness  and  glory  of  the 
blessed." 

Dr.  Duryee : 

"  When  the  Christian  finds  out  at  last  who  are  in 
the  regions  of  despair  and  what  they  are  there  meet- 
ing, we  are  very  sure  he  will  neither  be  affected  by  the 
number  nor  by  the  duration  of  their  punishment ." 

Jonathan  Edwards: 

"  When  they  shall  see  you  turned  away  and  be- 
ginning to  enter  into  the  great  furnace,  and  shall  see 
how  you  shrink  at  it,  and  hear  how  you  shriek  and 
cry  out,  yet  they  will  not  be  at  all  grieved  for  you  ; 
but  at  the  same  time,  you  will  hear  from  them  re- 
newed praises  and  hallelujahs  for  the  true  and 
righteous  judgments  of  God  in  so  dealing  with  you." 

Testimony  of  Dr.  Momerie,  London  Inquirer 
(he  himself  heard  a  clergyman  deliver  this  from 
his  pulpit) : 

"My  brethren,  you  may  imagine  that,  when  you 
look  down  from  heaven  and  see  your  acquaintances 
and  friends  and  relatives  in  hell,  your  happiness  will 
be  somewhat  marred.  But  no !  You  will  then  be 
so  purified  and  perfected  that,  as  you  gaze  on  that 
sea  of  suffering,  it  will  only  increase  your  joy." 

A  friend  of  mine  heard  a  Baptist  preacher  in  a 
great  New-England  city  the  past  winter  teach  the 


Appendix  323 

probability  of  Gi\{"s  s/iu/dii^  uj>  soinf  sou/s  in  hell  in 
solitary  confinement  forever.  Some  Bible  text  was 
twisted  into  this  meaninr^. 

Rev.  Gardiner  Spring,  New  York,  1834,  from  a 
sermon  on  missions : 

"  His  bosom  is  torn  and  distracted  with  anguish. 
His  lips  quiver  with  agony,  and  he  draws  his  last 
gasp  of  despair.  And,  oh  that  it  were  one  solitary 
pagan  only  !  But  think  of  twenty  five  millions  of 
your  fellow-men  every  year  sinking  in  such  a  death ; 
and  then  look  into  that  deep  abyss  where  millions 
after  millions  of  years  roll  on,  and  the  miserable 
sufferers  encounter  new  dangers,  new  fears,  new 
scenes  of  anguish  without  any  prospect  of  termina- 
tion, and  what  emotions  of  grief,  abasement,  and 
horror  may  smite  our  bosoms  !  *  We  are  verily  guilty 
concerning  our  brother.'  " 

An  American  missionary,  after  his  return  from 
China,  said : 

"  Fifty  thousand  a  day  go  down  to  the  fire  that  is 
not  quenched.  Six  hundred  millions  more  are  going 
the  same  road.  Should  }'ou  not  think,  at  least  once 
a  day,  of  the  fifty  thousand  who  that  day  sink  to  the 
doom  of  the  lost?  " 

The  American  Board  of  Commissioners  of  Foreign 
Missions  says : 

"  To  send  the  Gospel  to  the  heathen  is  a  work  of 
great  exigency.  Within  the  last  thirty  years  a  whole 
generation  of  five  hundred  millions  liave  gone  down 
to  eternal  death." 


324  Appendix 

Again,  the  same  Board  say  in  their  tract,  "The 
Grand  Motive  to  Missionary  Effort  "  : 

"  The  heathen  are  involved  in  the  ruins  of  apostasy, 
and  are  expressly  doomed  to  perdition.  Six  hun- 
dred millions  of  deathless  souls  on  the  brink  of  hell ! 
What  a  spectacle  !  " 

Rev.  Dr.  Cleaveland,  New  Haven,  1863: 
"  Glorious  things  have  been  achieved,  it  is  true. 
But,    after  all,  there  are  six  hundred   millions    still 
groping  in  the  shadow  of  death,  Sind perishing,  twenty 
millions  a  year  !  " 

Rev.  William  Davidson,  Xenia : 

"  And  this  shall  last  forever.  It  shall  never,  never 
end.  (Matt,  xxv.)  The  wicked  go  away  into  ever- 
lasting torments.  This  is  a  bitter  ingredient  in  their 
cup  of  wormwood, — a  more  terrible  thing  in  their 
terrible  doom.  If,  after  enduring  it  all  for  twice  ten 
thousand  times  ten  thousand  years,  they  might  have 
a  deliverance, — or,  at  least,  some  abatement, — it  were 
less  terrible.  But  this  may  never,  never  be.  Their 
estate  is  remediless.  There  is  a  great  gulf  fixed,  and 
they  cannot  pass  from  thence.  Or  if,  after  suffering 
all  this  for  as  many  years  as  there  are  aqueous  parti- 
cles in  air  and  ocean,  they  might  then  be  delivered  ; 
or  if,  after  repeating  that  amazing  period  as  many 
times  as  there  are  sand-grains  in  the  globe,  they  might 
then  be  delivered, — there  would  be  some  hope. 
Or,  if  you  multiply  this  latter  sum — too  infinite  to  be 
expressed  by  figures,  and  too  limitless  to  be  com- 
prehended by  angels — by  the  number  of  atoms  that 


Appendix  325 

compose  the  universe,  and  there  might  be  deliverance 
when  they  had  passed  those  amazing,  abysmal  gulfs 
of  duration,  then  there  would  be  sovie  hope.  But 
no.  When  all  is  suffered  and  all  is  past,  still  all  beyond 
is  eternity." 

From  a  Roman  Catholic  book,  published  "  for 
children,"  Rev.  J.  Furniss: 

"  The  fou^h  dungeon  is  *  the  boiling  kettle.' 
Listen  :  there  is  a  sound  like  that  of  a  kettle  boil- 
ing. Is  it  really  a  kettle  which  is  boiling?  No. 
Then  what  is  it  ?  Hear  what  it  is.  The  blood  is 
boiling  in  the  scalded  veins  of  that  boy ;  the  brain  is 
boiling  and  bubbling  in  his  head  ;  the  marrow  is  boil- 
ing in  his  bones.  The  fifth  dungeon  is  the  '  red-hot 
oven,'  in  which  is  a  little  child.  Hear  how  it  screams 
to  come  out ;  see  how  it  turns  and  twists  itself  about 
in  the  fire  ;  it  beats  its  head  against  the  roof  of  the 
oven.  It  stamps  its  little  feet  on  the  floor  of  the 
oven.  To  this  child  God  was  very  good.  Very 
likely  God  saw  that  this  child  would  get  worse  and 
worse,  and  would  never  repent ;  and  so  it  would  have 
to  be  punished  vtuch  more  in  hell.  So  God  in  his 
vicrcy  called  it  out  of  the  world  in  its  early  childhoody 

Spurgeon  says : 

"  First,  notice  they  are  to  be  cast  out.  They  are 
not  said  to  go ;  but,  when  they  come  to  heaven's 
gates,  they  are  said  to  be  cast  out.  As  soon  as  hypo- 
crites arrive  at  the  gates  of  heaven,  justice  will  say: 
'  There  he  comes  !  there  he  comes  !  He  spurned  a 
father's  prayers  and  mocked  a  mother's  tears.     He 


326  Appendix 

has  forced  his  way  downward  against  all  the  advant- 
ages mercy  has  supplied.  And  now  there  he  comes. 
Gabriel,  take  the  man.'  The  angel,  binding  you 
hand  and  foot,  holds  you  one  single  moment  over 
the  mouth  of  the  chasm.  He  bids  you  look  down 
— down — down.  There  is  no  bottom  ;  and  you  hear 
coming  up  from  the  abyss  sullen  moans  and  hollow 
groans  and  screams  of  tortured  ghosts.  You  quiver, 
your  bones  melt  like  wax,  and  your  marrow  quakes 
within  you.  Where  is  now  thy  might,  and  where 
thy  boasting  and  bragging  ?  Ye  shriek  and  cry,  ye 
beg  for  mercy  ;  but  the  angel,  with  one  tremendous 
grasp,  seizes  you  fast,  and  then  hurls  you  down  with 
the  cry,  '  Away,  away ! '  And  down  you  go  to  the 
pit  that  is  bottomless,  and  roll  forever  downward — 
downward — downward — ne'er  to  find  a  resting-place 
for  the  soles  of  your  feet.     Ye  shall  be  cast  out. 

"  And  xvJiere  are y on  to  be  cast  to  ?  Ye  are  to  be 
cast  '  into  outer  darkness  ' ;  ye  are  to  be  put  in  the 
place  where  there  will  be  no  hope.  For,  by  the 
'  light,'  in  Scripture,  we  understand  '  hope  ';  and  you 
are  to  be  put  '  into  outer  darkness,'  where  there  is  no 
light,  no  hope.  Is  there  a  man  who  has  no  hope?  I 
cannot  suppose  such  a  person.  One  of  you,  perhaps, 
says,  '  I  am  thirty  pounds  in  debt,  and  shall  be  sold 
up  by  and  by ;  but  I  have  a  hope  that  I  may  get  a 
loan,  and  so  escape  my  dif^culty.'  Says  another, 
*  My  business  is  ruined,  but  things  may  take  a  turn 
yet, — I  have  a  hope.'  Says  another,  '  I  am  in  great 
distress,  but  I  hope  that  God  will  provide  for  me.* 
Another  says,  '  I  am  fifty  pounds  in  debt :  I  am  sorry 
for  it ;  but  1  will  set  these  strong  hands  to  work,  and 


Appendix  327 

do  my  best  to  get  out  of  it.'  One  of  you  thinks  a 
friend  is  dying;  but  you  have  a  hope  that  perhaps, 
the  fever  may  take  a  turn,  that  he  may  yet  live.  But 
in  hell  there  is  no  hope.  They  have  not  even  the 
hope  of  dying — the  hope  of  being  annihilated.  They 
are  forever,  forever,  forever  lost  !  On  every  chain  in 
hell  there  is  written  '  forever.'  In  the  fires  there 
blazes  out  the  word  '  forever.'  Up  above  their  heads 
they  read  *  forever.'  Their  eyes  are  galled,  and  their 
hearts  are  pained  with  the  thought  that  it  is  *  forever.' 
Oh,  if  I  could  tell  you  to-night  that  hell  would  one 
day  be  burned  out,  and  that  those  who  were  lost 
might  be  saved,  there  would  be  a  jubilee  in  hell  at 
the  thought  of  it.  But  it  cannot  be  :  it  is  ''forever  ' 
they  are  *  cast  into  outer  darkness.' 

"  But  I  want  to  get  over  this  as  quickly  as  I  can  ; 
for  who  can  bear  to  talk  thus  to  his  fellow-creatures? 
What  is  it  that  the  lost  are  doing  ?  They  are  '  weep- 
ing and  gnashing  their  teeth.'  Do  you  gnash  your 
teeth  now  ?  You  would  not  do  it  except  you  were 
in  pain  and  agony.  Well,  in  hell  there  is  always 
gnashing  of  teeth.  And  do  you  know  why  ?  There 
is  one  gnashing  his  teeth  at  his  companion,  and  mut- 
ters, *  I  was  led  into  hell  by  you.  You  led  me  astray. 
You  taught  me  to  drink  the  first  time.'  And  the 
other  gnashes  his  teeth,  and  says  :  '  What  if  I  did  ? 
You  made  me  worse  than  I  should  have  been  in  after- 
times.'  There  is  a  child  who  looks  at  her  mother, 
and  says,  *  Mother,  you  trained  me  up  in  vice.'  And 
the  mother  gnashes  her  teeth  again  at  the  child,  and 
says,  '  I  have  no  pity  for  you  ;  for  you  excelled  me 
in  it,  and  led  me  into  deeper  sin.'     Fathers  gnash 


328  Appendix 

their  teeth  at  their  sons,  and  sons  at  their  fathers. 
And,  methinks,  if  there  are  any  who  will  have  to 
gnash  their  teeth  more  than  others  it  will  be 
seducers,  when  they  see  those  whom  they  have  led 
from  the  paths  of  virtue,  and  hear  them  say,  '  Ah  ! 
we  are  glad  you  are  in  hell  with  us  ;  you  deserve  it, 
for  you  led  us  here.' 

"  Have  any  of  you  to-night  upon  your  consciences 
the  fact  that  you  have  led  others  to  the  pit  ?  Oh, 
may  sovereign  grace  forgive  you  !  '  We  have  gone 
astray  like  lost  sheep,'  said  David.  Now  a  lost 
sheep  never  goes  astray  alone,  if  it  is  one  of  the 
flock.  I  lately  read  of  a  sheep  that  leaped  over  the 
parapet  of  a  bridge,  and  was  followed  by  every  one 
of  the  flock.  So,  if  one  man  goes  astray,  he  leads 
others  with  him.  Some  of  you  will  have  to  account 
for  others'  sins  when  you  get  to  hell,  as  well  as  your 
own.  Oh,  what  'weeping  and  gnashing  of  teeth' 
there  will  be  in  that  pit !  " 

"  There  is  a  real  fire  in  hell,  as  truly  as  you  have 
now  a  real  body, — a  fire  exactly  like  that  which  we 
have  on  earth  in  everything  except  this :  that  it  will 
not  consume,  though  it  will  torture  you.  You  have 
seen  the  asbestos  lying  in  the  fire  red-hot  ;  but  when 
you  take  it  out,  it  is  unconsumed.  So  your  body 
will  be  prepared  by  God  in  such  a  way  that  it  will 
burn  forever  without  being  consumed.  It  will  lie, 
not  as  you  consider,  in  metaphorical  fire,  but  in 
actual  flame.  Di3  our  Saviour  mean  fictions  when 
he  said  that  he  would  cast  body  and  soul  into  hell? 
What  should  there  be  a  pit  for  if  there  were  no 


Appendix  '        329 

bodies  ?  Why  fire,  why  chains,  if  there  were  to  be  no 
bodies?  Can  fire  touch  the  soul'?  Can  pits  shut  in 
spirits?  Can  chains  fetter  souls  ?  No  ;  pits  and  fire 
and  chains  are  for  bodies  ;  and  bodies  shall  be 
there.  Thou  wilt  sleep  in  the  dust  for  a  little  while. 
When  thou  diest,  thy  soul  will  be  tormented  alone, 
— that  will  be  a  hell  for  it, — but  at  the  judgment 
day  thy  body  will  join  thy  soul  ;  and  then  thou  wilt 
have  twin  hell^  Body  and  soul  shall  be  together, 
each  brimful  of  pain,  thy  soul  sweating  in  its  inmost 
pore  drops  of  blood,  and  thy  body  from  head  to  foot 
suffused  with  agony  ;  conscience,  judgment,  memory, 
all  tortured  ;  but  more,  thy  head  tormented  with 
racking  pains,  thine  eyes  starting  from  their  sockets 
with  sights  of  blood  and  woe,  thine  ears  tormented 
with 

'  Sullen  moans  and  hollow  groans, 
And  shrieks  of  tortured  ghosts  '  ; 

thine  heart  beating  high  with  fever,  thy  pulse  rattling 
at  an  enormous  rate  in  agony,  thy  limbs  cracking  like 
the  martyrs  in  the  fire,  and  yet  unburnt  ;  thyself  put 
in  a  vessel  of  hot  oil,  pained,  yet  coming  out  undc- 
stroyed  ;  all  thy  veins  becoming  a  road  for  the  iiot 
feet  of  pain  to  travel  on  ;  every  nerve  a  strinj^  on 
which  the  devil  shall  ever  play  his  diabolical  tunc  of 
Hell's  Unutterable  Lament ;  thy  soul  forever  and 
ever  aching,  and  thy  body  palpitating  in  unison  with 
thy  soul.  Fictions,  sir?  Again,  I  say,  they  arc  no 
fictions,  and,  as  God  liveth,  but  solid,  stern  truth.  If 
God  be  true,  what  I  have  said  is  the  truth  ;  and  you 
will  find  it  one  day  to  be  so." 


330  Appendix 

Albert  Barnes  writes  : 

"  In  the  distress  and  anguish  of  my  own  spirit,  I 
confess  I  see  not  one  ray  to  disclose  to  me  the  rea- 
son why  man  should  suffer  to  all  eternity.  I  have 
never  seen  a  particle  of  light  thrown  on  these  sub- 
jects that  has  given  a  moment's  ease  to  my  tortured 
mind.  It  is  all  dark — dark — dark  to  my  soul ;  and 
I  cannot  disguise  it. 

"  I  trust  other  men — as  they  profess  to  do — under- 
stand this  better  than  I  do,  and  that  they  have  not 
the  anguish  of  spirit  which  I  have;  but  I  confess, 
when  I  look  on  a  world  of  sinners  and  sufferers, 
upon  death-beds  and  graveyards,  upon  the  world  of 
woe,  filled  with  hosts  to  suffer  forever ;  when  I  see 
my  friends,  my  parents,  my  family,  my  people,  my 
fellow-citizens ;  when  I  look  upon  a  whole  race,  all 
involved  in  this  sin  and  danger ;  and  when  I  see  the 
great  mass  of  them  wholly  unconcerned  ;  and  when 
I  feel  that  God  only  can  save  them,  and  yet  He  does 
not  do  it, — I  am  struck  dumb.  It  is  all  dark,  dark, 
dark,  to  my  soul;  and  I  cannot  disguise  it." 

Note. — Many  of  these  extracts  I  owe  to  Alger's  History  of  the 
Doctrine  of  a  Future  Life  ;  others  I  have  myself  collected. 


INDEX 


Abbott,  Dr.  Lyman,  265 

Abraham,  God  of,  i^ 

Accadians,  5 

Achilles,  iSi,  276 

Acts,  Book  of  the,  221 

Adam   and    Eve,    the   fable   of, 

262 
Aionian  time,  250 
Alexander  the  Great,  181 
Am.alek,  3 
"American    Board,"    the,    255, 

323 
Amnion,  3 
Animal  consciousness,  S3 

instincts,  29 

Antioch,  224 

Ape,  is  man  descended  from  the  ? 

80 
Apostolic  succession,  217,  21S 
Arabs,  143 
Ark  of  God,  36 
Astronomy  and  the  Church,  54, 

105 
Athens,  the  citizen  of,  122,  135 
Atoms,  the  theory  of,  60 
Atonement,  the,  152-155 

Bab    the,  147 
Babylon,  religions  of,  4 
Babylonian  legend  of  the  crea- 
tion, 73 
Baptism,  the  rite  of,  241 
Baptist  Church,  see  Church 
Barbaric    idea   of   God,    34 

of  hell,  244-246 

Barnes,  Dr.  Albert,  261,  330 
Bible,  first  word  in  the,  49 

large  part  of  the,  valueless 

to-day,  115 


Bible    Luther  and  the,  226 

Biia.KS,  92-116 

Bickersteth,  Edward  IL,  297 

Bloody  Mary,  103,  252 

Boy's  idea  of  his  father,  a,  117 

Browning,  Robert,  115,  179,  213 

Bruno,  7 

Bryant,  William  Cullen,  18S 

Buddha,  146,  164 

Bushnell,  Dr.  Horace,  46 

Byron,  Lord,  1S4 

Civsar,  122 

Calvin,  John,  134,  136 

Candid  examination  of  theism,  a, 

13 
Carlyle,  Thomas.  115 
Catholic,  Copernicus  a,  52 

faction  in  England,  103 

Catholic  Church,  j-<r  Church 
Ceremonies  in  religion,  value  of, 

^7  . 
Chemistry,   the   theories  of,  60, 

Chilon,  6g 

Christ,  the  coming  of,  149 

the  divinity  of,  135 

the  resurrection  of,  278-281 

the  service  of,  45,  136,  152- 

155, 161-165 
Christian    conception    of    God, 

123 

Science,  100,  147 

Christianity,  the  waning  of,  5-6, 

Chrf)nicles,  Book  of,  115 
Church,  The,  216-242 

the,  a  special  depository  of 

divine  truth,  218-219 


331 


332 


Index 


Church,  Baptist,  the,  255,  256 
Congregational,    the,    221, 

255 

Episcopal,    the,    loi,    134, 

2i6,  222,  254,  259 

Greek,  the,  217,  219,  223- 

225,  263 

Methodist,  the,  134 

Permanence  of  the,  226—228 

Presbyterian,  the,  loi,  134, 

221,  254,  321 

Rise     of    the     Protestant, 

225-226 

Roman,  the,  194,  216,  217, 

223-225,  260,  262,  303 

science  and  the,  53 

Churches,  hold  of,  upon  the  peo- 
ple, I 

need  for,  232-236 

Cicero,  122 

Civilization  and  worship,  167 

Cleaveland,  Dr.,  324 

Clifford's  teachings,  61 

Columbus,  52 

Common  law,  264 

Communion,  the  rite  of,  177, 
241 

Confession  of  Faith,  the  Presby- 
terian, 254 

Conflict  between  religion  and 
science,  37 

Confucius,  99,  113,  145 

Congregationalists,  see  Church 

Constantinople,  225 

Copernican  system,  194 

Copernicus,  52 

Copyists  of  the  Bible,  96 

Cosmology  the  beginning  of  a 
religion,  49 

Creation,  Babylonian  legend  of, 

73      .  . 

original  idea  of,  60,  70-72 

Creationism,  83 

Creative  power,  a,  62 

Creed,  importance  of  the,  10,  23, 

67,  68,  241 

Dante,  51,  253,  283,  287,  303 
"  Day  of  Doom,"  259-260,  320 
Divinations,  93 


Dix,  Dorothea,  184 
Draper,  Dr.,  37 
Druids,  4 
Dumas,  Alexandre,  108 

Eddy,  Mary  Baker,  100 

Eden,  Garden  of,  71 

Edwards,     Jonathan,     on    hell, 

254,  256,  258,  319-320 
Egypt,  religion  of,  25 
Elijah,  translation  of,  279 
Eliot,  George,  107 
Elohim,  the,  49 
Emerson,  R.  W.,  115 
Enoch,  translation  of,  279 
Episcopalian,  jft' Church 
Esther,  inspiration  of  the  Book 

of,  115 
Ethnic  scriptures,  the,  39 
Euphrates   Valley,    religions    of 

the,  4 
Everett,  Dean,  27 
Evil,  not  an  entity,  128 

origin  of,  71,  85 

Evolution,  doctrine  of,  75-88 
Ezekiel,  Book  of,  115 

Faraday,  Michael,  61 
Firmament,  the,  50 
Fiske,  John,  15,  16 
Flammarion,  63 
Formalism  in  worship,  170 

Galileo,  53 

Gautama  (Buddha),  113,  146 
Gehenna  and  Paradise,  279 
Genesis,  the  Book  of,  in  the  light 
of  evolution,  78 

the  writer  of,  50 

God,  barbaric  idea  of,  34 

consciousness  of,  127 

early  Christian  idea  of,  123- 

eliminated  by  science,  12 

goodness  of,  127,  128 

• intelligence  of,  126 

Isaiah's  idea  of,  37 

is  love,  24 

Jesus's  definition  of,  37 

of  the  Old  Testament  out- 
grown, 136 


Index 


133 


Govl,  OKI  Testament  idea  of,  35 

omnipotence  of,  I2(),  201- 

207 

omnipresence   of,  66,    112, 

130-133.  I3!5.  139-  201-207 

personality  of,  126,  127 

responsibility  of,  263-264 

spiritual  conception  of,  36 

unity  of,  129 

God's  communications  with  men, 
see  Inspiration 

relation    to    the    universe, 

201-207  ^ 

Golf,  Sunday,  232 

Gordon,  Dr.  George  A.,  262 

Government  illustrative  of  re- 
ligion, II 

Governmental  theory  of  the 
atonement,  153 

Gravitation,  discovery  of,  7 

Greece,  religions  of,  4 

Atheism  of,  121-122 

Greek  and  Roman  ideas  of  retri- 
bution, 245-246 

of  Heaven,  275- 

276 

Greeks,  science  and  the,  73 

Haeckel,  61 

Heaven   of  Dante   and    Milton, 

2S3,  2S7,  303 
Greek  and  Roman  idea  of, 

275-276 

the  Indians',  274 

the  Mohammedan,  275 

the  Norseman's,  275 

of  the  Old  Testament,  276- 

277 

A  sensible  idea  of,  2SS-291, 

307-316 

a  state  or  place  ?  299-300 

of  Swedenborg,  2S7 

Heavens,  272-291 

Hebrew  conception  of  the  uni- 
verse, 49-51 

forms  of  worship,  228 

idea  of  hell,  50 

Hell,  Jonathan  Kdwards's  idea 
of,  254.  256,  25S,  319-320 

Hebrew  idea  of,  50 


Hell,  Hindu  and  Persian  idea  of, 

317 

Jesus's  views  of,  249-251 

Old     Testament    idea    of, 

247-24S 

Origin  of  the  idea  of,  244 

A    I'arsee    description    of, 

317 

Presbyterian  idea  of,  321 

the  real,  270-271 

Spurgeon's  idea  of,  257-258 

Jeremy    Taylor's    idea    of, 

254.  319 

various  descriptions  of  (Ap- 
pendix), 317-330 

Hells,  243-271 

Homer,  181 

Huxley,  186 

Idols,  117 

"  Index,"  the  Catholic,  53 

Infallibility,  the  doctrine  of,  99- 

106 
Infant  damnation,  259-261 
Inspiration,  early  idea  of,  as  God 

talking  with  men,  92,  106-109 

what  is,  111-113 

Inspired  writings,  so  called,  94- 

97 
Instinct  and  religion,  2()-3i 
Intercession   between   man  and 

God,    the   possibility  of,   176, 

1 77  _ 
Isaiah's  conception  of  God,  37 
Ixion,  the  punishment  of,  245 

Jeremiah,  Book  of,  inspiration  of 

the,  115 
Jesus,  an  enemy  to  formalism,  171 
divinity  of,    113,    135-137, 

150 

"  descended      into      hell," 

279-2S0 

established  no  church,  229 

influence  of,  90 

nowhere,  claims  to  be  the 

Messiah,  150 

Mozoomdar's  idea  of,  250 

opposed  to  priesthood,  223- 

224 


334 


Index 


Jesus,  the  life-work  of,  149,  239 

the  second  coming  of,  229 

what  the  life    of,    teaches, 

163,  164 
Jesus's  definition  of  God,  37 
teachings  concerning  future 

punishment,  249-251 
words    concerning     prayer, 

213 
Jewish  form  of  prayer,  174 
Jews,  early  religion  of  the,  121- 

123 
Jude,  inspiration  of  the  Epistle 

of,  115 

Kepler,  7,  53,  114,  194 

Kings,   inspiration   of  the  Book 

of,  115 
Koran,  the,  99,  102 
Krishna,  145 


Lalande,   12 

Libations  to  the  gods,  168 

Life,  Spencer's  definition  of,  15 

Lincoln,  Abraham,  165,  1S3 

Longfellow,  H.  W.,  115 

Lowell,  J.  R.,  115,  116 

Love,  the  heart  of  the  world    24 

Lucretius,  122,  124 

Luther,  Martin,  134,  136 

Man,  69-91 

brotherhood  of,  241-242 

condemned  to  death,  71,  72 

mental  development  of,  33 

• needs  of,  158 

■ origin  of,  82    ' 

a  religious  being,  230-231 

Martineau,  64 
Mary,  "Bloody,"  252,  103 
Materialistic  theory,  the,  62 
Matter,  what  is,  59-62 
Memphis,  gods  of,  4 
"  Metaphysics,"  56 
Milton,  John,  51,  253 
Milton's  heaven,  283-287 
Moab,  3 
Mohammed,  113,  146 


Mohammedan  worship,  174 

heaven,  the,  275 

Momerie,  Dr.,  259 
Monotheism,  119 
Moody,  Dwight  L.,  134,  136 
Moors  in  Spain,  40 
"Moral  Theory"  of  the  atone- 
ment, the,  46 
Mormon.  Book  of,  100 
Mormonism,    147 
Mozoomdar,  250 

Napoleon,   183 

Nature  worship,  184,  1S5 

New  Testament,  autliorship  of, 

248-249 
Newton,  Isaac,  7,  53,  194 
Nightingale,  Florence,  1S4 
Norse,  gods  of  the,  5 

Odin,  5 

Old    Testament    conception     of 

God,  35 
idea  of   heaven,  276- 

277 

idea  of  hell,  247-248 

monotheism  of  the,  123 

Omar  Khayyam's  heaven,  270 
Organization,    value  of,   in  reli- 
gious life,  233-235 
Origen  a  Universalist,  250-251 
Osiris,  145 

Paradise  and  Gehenna,  279 
Parsee  description  of  hell,  317 
Paul,  a  Universalist,  248-250 

visions  of,  94,  no 

Persian  origin  of  the  legend  of 

creation,  73 
Peter,  inspiration  of  the  epistles 

of,   115 
the  founder  of  the  Church, 

220-221 
Philistia,  religion  of,  3 
Polytheism,  119,  120,  191,  192 
Pope,  the,  103,  252 
power  of  the,  unauthorized, 

223,  224 
Alexander,  on  heaven,  274 


Index 


335 


Prayer,  100-215 
definition  of,  207 

efficacy    of,    19S-200,    20S- 

2og 

Jesus's   wonls    concerning, 

213 
likely  to  be  outgrown,  207- 

20S 

-meeting,  the  New  Eng- 
land, 196, 197 

science  and,  197 

thanksgiving  the  better  jiart 

of,  211  X 

Predestination,  258-262,  265 
Presbyterian,  st-e  Church 
Priesthood   unauthorized  by  Je- 
sus, 223-224 
Prometheus  a  saviour,  145 

the  punishment  of,  245 

Ptolemaic  theory,  the,  51,  52,  194 
Ptolemy,  51 

Rachel,  36 

Reform,  waves  of;  their  value, 

235.-237 
Religion,  a  fundamental  instinct, 

14 

and  science,  no  conflict  be- 
tween, 37.  38 

definition  of,  19-24 

divinity  of,  2 

essential  thing  in,  26 

permanency  of,    i,  227-22S 

the  one  practical    question 

concerning,  22 

Religions  are  dead,  25 

of  Babylon,  4 

of  Greece  and  Rome,  4,  25 

Renaissance,  the,  124 

Resurrection  Life,  The,  292- 
316 

Resurrection,  meaning  of  the 
word,  295-297 

Spurgeon's  ideaof  the,  297- 

298 

Revelation,  115,  281 

Ritual,  importance  of,  g,  23,  241 

Romanes,  Geo.  J.,  13,   28 

Rome,  athcivm  of,  121,  122 

religion  uf,  4,  25 


Ruskin,   115 

SacramejUs,  Jesus  established  no 

222-223 
Sacred,  what  is  old  is,  176 
Sacrifice,  the  early  idea  of,  143 

the  si)irit  of,  1 71-174 

Satan,  claim   of,    on   the   human 

race,  45 
Savkjuks,  140-165 
of  the  world,  who  arc  the, 

159-161 
Schurman,  J.  G.,  9 
Science,  and  prayer,  197-200 

and    religion,     no    conlli^t 

between,  37,  38 

antagonistic  to  Ciod,  11 

freedom  of,  6 

vs.  the  Church,  53 

vs.  theology,  37-3S 

Service  an  element  of  religion, 

24 
Shedd,  Dr.  W.  G.  T.,  153 
"  Sheol,"  247,  27S 
Sin.  "original,"  262-263 

punishment  for,  26O-270 

Sistine  Madonna,  1S3 
Sisyphus,  the  punishment  of,  245 
Socialism,  the  theories  of,  237 
Socrates,  122 

Solomon's  day,  worship  in,  170 
Soul,  origin  of  the,  83,  84 
Spain  defies  the  Vatican,  6 
Spaniards  vs.  Moors,  40 
Spencer,  Herbert,  15,  75 
Spiritual  conception  of  God,  36 
Spring,  Dr.  Gardner,  25S 
Spurgeon's  idea  of  hell,  257-25S 

of   the    resurrection, 

297-298 

Sumner,  Charles,  1S6 
Swedenborg's  heaven,  287 
Synagogue  the  progenitor  of  the 
Church,  228 

Tantalus,  the  punishment  of,  245 
Taylor,  Jeremy,  on  iiell,  254,  319 
Tennyson,  Alfred,   67,  II5,  144, 

214.  265 
Tertullian  on  hell,  251-252,  318 
Thebes,  gods  of,  4 


1 


336 


Index 


Theism,  candid  examination  of, 

13 
Theology,  meaning  of  the  word, 

27 

temporary  by  nature,  34 

Thor,  5 
Thoreaii,  115 
Thought-transference,  62 
Threefold  nature  of  man,  32 
Through  Nature  to  God,   15 


Unity  of  religions,  ethnic  scrip- 
tures on,  39 
Universalist,  Paul  a,  248 
Universe,  The,  49-68 

an  intelligent  being,  65 

God's  relation  to  the,  201, 

207 


Urim  and  Thummim,  94 
Vatican,  decrees  of  the,  6 
Vishu,  145 

Wallace,  Albert  Russel,  75 
Warfare  of  Science  ivith  Theol- 
ogy, 38 
Washington,  George,  183 
White,  Andrew,  38 
Whitman,  Walt,  113,  115 
Whittier,  J,  G.,  115 

orthodoxy  of,  292-294 

Whittier's  view  of  God,  35 
Wilberforce,  187 
Wordsworth,  William,  115,  184 
Worship,  166-1S9 

Hebrew  forms  of,  228 

is  uplifting,  184 

what  is  essential  in,  179 


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pretation of  St.  Paul.  .  .  .  It  is  an  immense  gain  to  have  the  narrative 
lifted  from  the  mean  function  of  being  an  artful  monument  and  mirror  of 
a  strife  internal  to  Christianity  which  it  seeks  by  a  process,  now  of  creation, 
now  of  eliminatitm,  to  overcome  and  to  concealj  to  the  high  purpose  of 
representing  the  religion  as  it  began  within  the  Empire  and  as  it  actually  was  to 
the  Empire  and  the  Empire  to  it.  .  .  .  Professor  Ramsay  has  made  a  solid 
and  valuable  contribution  to  the  interpretation  of  the  Apostolic  literature  and  of 
the  Apostolic  age — a  contribution  distinguished  no  less  by  ripe  scholarship,  in 
dependent  judgment,  keen  vision,  and  easy  mastery  of  material,  than  by  fresh- 
ness of  thought,  boldness  of  combination,  and  striking  originality  of  view."-' 
Tht  Speaker. 

IMPRESSIONS  OF  TURKEY  DURING 
TWELVE  YEARS'  WANDERINGS. 

8vo $1.75 

"  No  conception  of  the  real  status  of  Turkey  is  possible  unless  something  is 
understood  of  'the  interlacing  and  alternation  of  the  separate  and  unblending 
races.'  .  .  .  Such  an  understanding  is  admirably  presented  in  Prof.  Ramsay's 
book,  which  gives  a  near  and  trustwortny  insight  into  actual  Turkish  conditions." 
— A'.  Y.  T'tnes. 

WAS  CHRIST  BORN  AT  BETHLEHEM? 

A  Study  in  the  Credibility  of  St.  Luke.     Part  I.     The  Importance  of 
the  Problem.    Part  II.    The  Solution  of  the  Problem.    8vo,  $1.75 

"  The  work  is  one  of  which  students  of  biblical  criticism  will  need  to  take  account. 
It  is  absolutely  candid  and  straightforward,  thorough  and  discriminating,  and 
courteous  to  other  scholars  whose  conclusions  it  sees  most  reason  to  condemn. 
It  is  a  fine  piece  of  work." — The  Congregationalist. 

HISTORICAL  COMMENTARY  UPON  THE 
EPISTLE  TO  THE  GALATIANS. 

Svo $3.00 


G.  P.  PUTNAM'S  SONS,  New  York  and  London. 


Date  Due 

1 

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